Architecture and Sustainability: Integrating Built and Natural Environments

Architecture and Sustainability Integrating Built and Natural Environments
Sustainability and its transformation of design, development, and planning of the built environment has reached a "tippingpoint," as reflected in the near nation wide adoption of green / sustainable guidelines predominantly based on the U.S.

Green Building Council's LEED system for buildings.

Independent sustainable initiatives framed by individual municipalities, universities, and nongovernmental organizations across the United States have changed the landscape of competition and client expectations.

A handful of new models go beyond traditional boundaries of building and site to address specific community and urban contexts, way finding, infrastructure, outdoor environmental comfort, and sustainable transition planning to reach 100 percent renewables, among other issues.

The key to remaining competitive as a firm or learning organization, attracting grant funding, and keeping a project current over the typically multi year process of design and construction is to cast a wider net for pragmatic and site-specific sustainable opportunities that can be captured in this larger framework.

This program explores how this broader approach results in benefits of reduced capital costs, expedited development approvals, higher retained land value, and long-term restorative pathways.

Histories of nationally recognized