Green Architecture

Green Architecture | About

Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — the complete building life cycle.

Goff D’Antonio Associates & Sustainable Architecture

Goff D’Antonio Associates has traditionally tended towards sustainable design and building architecture. Today, we clearly feel the urgency and wisdom of actively and formally pursuing sustainable green architecture standards. We have forged a strong team to implement green projects and manage the green certification process.

Our green project team will strive to achieve not only ecological but aesthetic harmony between a structure and its surrounding natural and built environment. Creating a sustainable, enduring and memorable structure.

Sustainable Design Consultation
Integrated Green Design and Construction
LEED Certification Management

Green Building Practices

Green building brings together a vast array of practices and techniques to reduce and ultimately eliminate the impacts of buildings on the environment and human health. It often emphasizes taking advantage of renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through passive solar, active solar, and photo voltaic techniques and using plants and trees through green roofs, rain gardens, and for reduction of rainwater run-off. Many other techniques, such as using packed gravel for parking lots instead of concrete or asphalt to enhance replenishment of ground water, are used as well.

Effective green buildings are more than just a random collection of environmental friendly technologies. They require careful, systemic attention to the full life cycle impacts of the resources embodied in the building and to the resource consumption and pollution emissions over the building’s complete life cycle.

On the aesthetic side of green architecture or sustainable design is the philosophy of designing a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site. There are several key steps in designing sustainable buildings: specify ‘green’ building materials from local sources, reduce loads, optimize systems, and generate on-site renewable energy.

Green Architecture Benefits

Buildings designed with environmentally sensitive goals in mindhave advantages to owners and the general public:

Reduced operating costs by increasing productivity and using less energy and water
Improved public and occupant health due to improved indoor air quality
Reduced environmental impacts by, for example, lessening storm water runoff and the heat island effect
Improve long-term economic performance
Reduce construction and demolition waste
Bring higher resale value
Include renewable energy technologies
Easier to maintain and built to last

What is LEED® certification?

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. In the United States and in a number of other countries around the world, LEED certification is the recognized standard for measuring building sustainability. Achieving LEED certification is the best way for you to demonstrate that your building project is truly “green.”

LEED certification

provides independent, third-party verification that a building project meets the highest green building and performance measures. All certified projects receive a LEED plaque, which is the nationally recognized symbol demonstrating that a building is environmentally responsible, profitable and a healthy place to live and work. There are both environmental and financial benefits to earning LEED certification.
There are both environmental and financial benefits to earning LEED certification:

Lower operating costs and increased asset value.
Reduce waste sent to landfills.
Conserve energy and water.
Healthier and safer for occupants.
Reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
Qualify for tax rebates, zoning allowances and other incentives in hundreds of cities.
Demonstrate an owner’s commitment to environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

What is a LEED Accredited Professional?

LEED Accredited Professionals (LEED APs) are building industry professionals who have demonstrated a thorough understanding of green building and the LEED® Green Building Rating System™. The LEED AP credential indicates that the professional has the knowledge and skills to facilitate the LEED certification process.

_{Source: NRDC, USGBC, Wikipedia}