Green Design And Construction: An Example—Commercial “Green” Roofs

“Green” design and construction refers to architectural design and construction practices that take into consideration a number of issues related to the environment, including, but not limited to, energy savings in heating and cooling, environmentally friendly construction materials, wastewater, and placement on site. Despite the fact that only 3 % of new buildings in the U.S.A. have some environmentally friendly features, there is an ever-increasing interest in “green” design and construction. This manifests itself in paying special attention to energy conservation both in the production of materials used in buildings, as well as, energy conservation during functioning of the building. Thus the need to look at different building components with new and enhanced criteria. The guiding principle in such undertakings has been consideration and development of “green” solutions/alternatives for diverse building components/parts that: have fewer adverse ecological consequences, enhance the aesthetic appearance, are cost competitive, and are economically feasible when compared with traditional methods. This paper focuses on applying this approach in the analysis of one of the most important components of a building: the roof. Commercial green roofs were the area of focus of a study (1) within the context of a “green” design course at IUPUI and this study forms the basis of this paper. Even though green roofs have found extensive applications in Europe, the concept and the technique has not made its way into the U.S.A. in a way to be noticed. Within the context of this paper a basic treatise is provided on “green roofs” in terms of what they are, the types, special properties, and construction details, both in text and visual terms. A comparison is then provided between EPDM roofs, white roofs, and green roof systems. This comparison entails comparing not only of useful lives, maintenance requirements, insulation and reflective properties, but also, comparisons based on life-cycle cost and pay-back analysis.