Building Reuse is Green, Says Leading Architect

Richard Brenneman, “Building Reuse is Green, Says Leading Architect,” The Berkeley Daily Planet, Mar. 11, 2008 (available at http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-03-11/article/29433).

The Berkeley Daily Planet featured an article this week summarizing green development perspectives held by architect and green building expert Sandra Mendler.

Mendler, who spoke as a Green Building and Development panel member at the UC Berkeley Energy Symposium, explained that retrofits can generally match the efficiency standards of new construction. She further offered that retrofitting an existing building is generally greener than tearing it down and building a new one. Her conclusions echo findings made by DAPAC in their preparation of the Downtown Area Plan.

Other panelists at the symposium included Steve Selkowitz and Charles Huizenga of Lawrence Berkeley and Gail Brager of UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment. Each shared Mendler’s perspective that the current levels of emissions stemming from building energy use identified buildings as major targets for conservation efforts.

Among the factors contributing to energy use, “90% of a building’s embodied energy derives from five material choices: framing (steel, concrete or wood), enclosure systems (glass, masonry or metal), flooring, roofing and partitions.” Mendler offered, for example, that aluminum requires tens times the energy to produce as steel.

The article concludes with a plug for buildcarbonneutral.org, where builders can go to calculate the green-ness of their projects.