Design Strategies for Green Practice

Should green buildings not only work differently, but also look, feel, and be conceived differently? The emergence of LEED accreditation as the leading form of environmental performance monitoring and its associated points and checklist format can mask the necessity for architectural projects to have focused and effective design strategies that integrate sustainability with the design process. Green accountability does not always go hand in hand with architectural quality: a good building is certainly not necessarily a green building, while a green building is not always a good work of architecture. So it becomes important to recognize the unique character and possibilities in each project and then to develop environmentally responsive concepts that support and enhance the form of the architecture. This article discusses the current context for “Green Design Practice” through a series of quite different design assignments where the focus is upon enabling the design to emerge from the recognition of the “environmental and sustainability potential.”