Best Practices and Sustainability Rating Systems

The principles included in the AIA policy on sustainability rating systems comprise a compendium of best sustainable practices that rating systems should ideally address. Green building rating systems, standards, or regulations for the design and construction industry should encompass the following:

1. Be developed and renewed regularly, through a consensus-based process, in which all interested parties can participate
2. Require clearly defined design documentation to demonstrate compliance
3. Require compliance to be validated by an independent third party
4. Require the development of sustainable sites, while avoiding conversion of prime agricultural lands or wetlands, regenerating brownfield sites, or those that result in regenerative benefits to the natural environment
5. Require specific goals in the efficient use of water resources, that promote use of new wastewater technologies
6. Require goals for energy use reduction, especially non-renewable energy sources, with enhanced performance assured through commissioning of building systems
7. Promote the use of renewable energy sources
8. Require reduced use of non-renewable natural resources through the reuse of existing structures and materials, reduction in construction waste, promotion of recycled content materials, and use of materials independently certified as from sustainable sources
9. Require goals for improved indoor air quality (IAQ) through enhanced IAQ, thermal comfort, acoustics, daylighting and pollutant source control, and use low emission materials and building system controls
10. Promote the development and application of innovative designs and collaborative processes to improve environmental performance
11. Recognize the life cycle value of a community or project in addition to construction first costs, including assessment on climate change, acid rain, water pollution, resource depletion, and toxicity factors
12. Use life cycle assessment data as the basis for design and construction decision making
13. Acknowledge national, regional, and bio-climatic differences
14. Reduce (and eventually eliminate) on-site and off-site toxic elements in the built environment
15. Require specific measurable reductions in CO2 production in the built environment
16. Require documentation of actual building energy and operational performance

Educating Students, Emerging Architects and Future Business Leaders

Changing the ways of professional practice and how people perceive sustainability is part of the challenge facing the building industry, nonprofit green groups, and sustainability advocates. Academia, too, is grappling with how to integrate sustainability into architectural education. But architects are only one of many professional disciplines who ultimately will make decisions about the business of green design.

Building owners, engineers, financiers, lawyers, government administrators, elected officials, and building industry members play significant roles in promoting, paying for, and adopting sustainability principles, rating systems, guidelines, and standards, along with architects.

"Students and young architects are more aggressive about embracing sustainability principles," states Stewart. Multi-disciplinary academic programs available to those in and outside schools of architecture can effectively educate tomorrow's business leaders and future clients.

"Emerging architects understand the benefits of sustainability goals. It may be a hard sell for some clients, but in a world of scarce resources and a growing body of evidence pointing to the need for energy conservation, this is the future of the building industry," says Jeremy Edmunds, Assoc. AIA, P.E., LEED-AP, sustainability advisor, Cherokee Northeast, New York, New York, and 2006 National Associate Representative to the AIA Executive Committee.