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What is Sustainability? What is Beyond Green? What is a High-Performance Building?
SBIC defines sustainability as a mode of thinking and acting responsibly. A sustainable building is one in which the site, design, construction, occupancy, maintenance, and deconstruction of the building are accounted for in ways that promote energy, water, and material efficiencies, while providing healthy, productive, and comfortable indoor environments and long-term benefits to owners, occupants, and society as a whole. We believe that local actions relating to building design and construction have a long-term, global impact. SBIC embraces the following principles of sustainable design and development:
- Promoting environmental regeneration through construction
- Minimizing the destruction of the global biosphere due to buildings and construction
- Minimizing the consumption of nonrenewable energy, land, and other limited resources
- Minimizing the waste - and encouraging the recycling - of materials, water, and other limited resources
- Creating livable, durable, healthy, and productive environments
- Providing for easier restoration of the natural environment
In addition to teaching sustainable design and construction strategies, SBIC is eager to share our overarching philosophy that sustainability, while critical, cannot stand alone. We are all aware of the effects, for example, of natural disasters and the importance of disaster resistance in the wake of the Katrina and Rita hurricanes and the increased need for accessibility and security in our buildings. A more inclusive, integrated perspective, which we call going Beyond GreenTM, is required. Understanding and applying a whole building approach from design to turnover not only makes sense, it results in high-performance buildings.
High-performance buildings address human, environmental, economic, and total societal impact. As defined by SBIC high-performance buildings are:
- Sustainable
- Safe / Secure
- Functional
- Aesthetic
- Historic
- Productive
- Accessible
- Cost-Effective
You can learn more about each of these design objectives online at the Whole Building Design Guide.
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