Thursday, February 5, 2015
Sustainable Design
2015 will be the year that sustainability will be bigger than ever! It will heavily influence and emphasize design decisions, including our own. Sustainable practice is becoming more and more encouraged throughout the workplace. LEED and USGBC are the two big organizations paving the way for sustainable practices. Designers are becoming LEED Green Associates throughout their firms and should be all something we consider becoming. As Ana from HKS stated in our past class, it has taken over 15 years for companies and manufacturers to process out harmful substances in their products. More and more companies are becoming transparent about what they put in their products for the public to see to prove they are supporting sustainability. Some sustainable design practices we should be conscious of is optimizing site potential, minimize non-renewable energy consumption, use environmentally preferable products, protect and conserve water, enhance indoor air quality and optimize operation and maintenance practices. Through these holistic approaches encourage positive impacts on our design to create a healthy and productive for everyone to enjoy.We should be working with the environment rather than against it. Some cool ways designers are incorporating the environment into their design are through Biowalls. The Biowall is a thin profile indoor ecosystem designed for air quality improvement. Its made up of various plants, soillness media and a water proof backing.It reduces the demand for energy consumption mechanical air filtration systems through the natural filtration of the plants, plus its beautiful to look at!
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LOVE this!!
ReplyDeleteI am curious if the outer wall is blue or if it is just the lighting.
I think its great that you did your post on sustainability! You have some great examples in your post. Although sustainability is currently an option for many many industries, I hope that one day sustainability will become a necessity in all industries.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of biowalls! I think they create great interest within a room and are functional as well. I hope we continue to develop ways to reduce the maintenance and care aspect to make them more attractive to leery clients. Large companies already have process which makes maintaining these easy, but I would like to see new systems that are easy for the everyday business. Great Share!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rob--The Under Armour wall is one of my favorites, but how can smaller establishments implement this?
ReplyDeleteI think that sustainability is a wonderful topic to talk about! Each year it is increasing in importance and it really has an effect on our everyday lives. I recently became a LEED Green Associate, and until that point, I don't think I truly comprehended the full importance of sustainability in our designs. A biowall is one type of beneficial design decision when it comes to this, and I think that what's nice about it is that it can be functional, beneficial, and aesthetically pleasing all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right. Sustainability isn't going anywhere and I beleive that's a good thing. We should be designing spaces of quality that are meant to last. Though they have a more expensive initial cost their life cycle costs outweigh this.Fads come and go as colors, textures, and trends come and go but there are ways to design timeless and sustainable interiors that won't fail easily.
ReplyDeleteIt is really interesting to know about the actual structure of these eco-walls. I never really knew what went into building one, only that it is a great interesting idea.
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