Geo-Stewardship Strategies
“Going Green” with Your Design Requires Careful Planning

by Brian Cassidy, AIA

The “Green Movement” is an issue of great international importance and recognition in the design of buildings. In the past five years, the entire world has begun to embrace the idea that our built environment needs be as smart and sustainable as possible.

While the “green movement” recently started as a grassroots movement, it’s quickly gaining momentum and mainstream support. Church clients are beginning to become aware of how important this new trend is and how it might influence their futures. We must be good stewards of the finite resources the world has made available to us, and we need to consider the impact of construction, maintenance, utility costs and consumption habits on the world’s precious natural resources.

The main principals of building green are:

• Conservation of building materials 
• Long-term sustainability of buildings 
• The amount of energy consumed by buildings 
• Incorporation of recyclable concepts into material selection 

The heart of the green movement requires architects to be smart thinkers about every decision that goes into designing the built environment. The initial cost of building a more sustainable building comes with a small premium — currently about 5 percent to 10 percent on a typical structure. In the next five years, we expect the initial premium to be reduced to a negligible amount.

However, the long-term savings in energy consumption can save a church a great deal of money over the long run.

The green movement analyzes how much a material costs to install in a structure — but, perhaps more importantly, how many resources and how much energy consumption it takes to manufacture, fabricate, deliver and install the selected materials. These are hidden costs we don’t typically hear about.

For instance, a product made in China might cost less to produce, but shipping costs and energy consumption might clearly bring the cost of the product to more than a similar product produced locally. And, a building material that’s recycled into a new product consumes fewer resources. Similarly, a new product that can be recycled in the future — after a building has outlived its lifecycle — also consumes fewer resources over time. It’s imperative that we make smarter decisions on how to conceive future buildings and properties.

Take, for example, the price of steel, which has shot through the roof in the past two years. The escalation of steel prices makes it imperative that we consider the recycling of all metals as we contemplate future construction.

Additionally, we must consider reusing old concrete, masonry and asphalt rubble, reducing the pressure on our landfills, where they likely would reside forever. We can specify wood products that are grown in sustainable forestry programs, reducing the depletion of our existing forests, and we can select products that minimize ozone and greenhouse gases emissions that are contributing to global warming. These are the types of decisions we need to make to improve the long-term stewardship of our resources.

Past experience tells us that churches are generally good stewards of utility consumption. But as architects, we still put a high priority on designing structures that are “in sync” with our environment by using the free energy created by the sun, and looking for ways to take advantage of prevailing micro-climatic conditions of each property.

For example, in Arizona, we try not to place large expanses of glass facing the west as this will dramatically increase our electrical consumption by requiring larger air-conditioning equipment and higher operating costs. A poor choice like this results in higher initial costs and a utility premium every month over the life of the structure. In the recent past, we’ve experienced dramatic improvements in the areas of photovoltaic systems that convert solar radiation into energy that can be used immediately, stored in highly efficient batteries, or sold back to the nation’s electrical power grid.

A great website for additional information about environmentally responsible building techniques is the U.S. Green Building Council’s page at www.usgbc.org. This organization is the leader in the United States for information, and creating benchmarks for how to define and rate the performance of buildings.

When we say, “Be good stewards of your time, talents and resources,” you can interpret this literally in the area of sustainable construction.

Brian Cassidy, AIA, is the president of CCBG Architects with offices in Phoenix and San Diego. The firm specializes in planning and designing religious campuses. For more information, log on to www.ccbg-arch.com.