Von Löwen Designs

Green remodeling is a design and construction approach with a primary focus on providing the healthiest home possible, maximizing it’s life cycle, while minimizing the structure’s environmental impacts. These impacts include energy, water, and materials consumption, waste generation, and harmful emissions, both indoors and out.

Although the principles that govern green residential remodeling are shared with all other design and construction projects, more than a few aspects are unique to green remodeling:

• Range of projects – Residential remodeling covers everything from painting a room to refitting a kitchen, to gutting a whole house down to the framing and then rebuilding.

• Existing conditions – In new home construction we generally have just the site to consider, but in residential remodeling there are existing conditions that range from room configuration, to hazards such as mold, lead, and asbestos.

• Custom work – Whether in design or construction, just about every residential remodeling project is custom, with very little opportunity for the sorts of economies of scale that occur in production building.

• Professional – client relationship – Remodeling professionals almost always have a client and spec remodeling projects are rare. The closer relationship with homeowners requires skills and perspectives not generally required for new construction projects.

• Occupants – Remodeling professionals must plan and often conduct their work based on the health, safety and schedules of real people. Even if the work requires that the home be vacated, the timing and duration of such a period must be very carefully orchestrated.

• Sequenced or staged projects – Many residential remodeling projects are phased or sequenced projects, ie. (“we want to do the bathroom and then the kitchen”), and this can make for challenging orders of operation in both design and construction, often requiring innovation and improvisation by remodeling professionals.

• Integration – A cornerstone of all types of green building is systems integration, and residential remodeling adds a new dimension to this integration: integrating the old or existing with the new.

These unique aspects of residential remodeling mean that a best-practices guide, rather than a rating program is appropriate. This program and approach to green residential remodeling has been developed through a partnership between the American Society of Interior Designers, (ASID) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

Whole House – Systems Thinking Approach.

It is easy and tempting to boil down green building to simply product selections and glide over or even ignore the challenges of green building as a process and how systems need to be designed to work together. Be cognizant that it is rarely a single product, building component or a collection of attributes, that results in a home being labeled “green.”

Integration.

Getting designers, architects, engineers, builders, and trade contractors, all on the same page is not easy; and is not an everyday occurrence. Yet green residential remodeling does not just suggest professional integration at all levels and across all disciplines, it requires it.

Green vs. Good Design.

One of the challenges in developing resources for green building is deciding how to address what constitutes green design and construction, versus what constitutes good design and construction. What is the relationship between the two? Homeowners should recognize that you can still have a quality project that is not a green project, but you cannot have a green project that is not also a quality project. Good design and construction are the foundation of green design and construction. For example, you can’t have just efficient lighting; it must also be effective lighting. Similarly, beauty is an integral part of green design and construction; the beauty of a building or project is the starting point for durability, one of the most important attributes in green building.

Climate.

A very significant aspect of building green is designing and constructing for the climate and site. Certain strategies will need to be developed with varying degrees of implementation, depending on climate. Many sources of additional information yield climate and site specific guidance and will need to be addressed.

Individual Approach.

Given the nature of green building and the depth and unpredictability of residential remodeling in particular, your approach will certainly vary depending on the actual scope of the project, client requirements, budget, and ability to connect with the best resources for more extensive coverage of techniques, strategies, and materials.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, so before you leave be sure to visit Von Löwen Designs to view an assortment of refreshing examples in kitchen and bath design concepts, refined palette and interior finishes, and sustainable yet chic, green remodeling ideas that may encourage and inspire your next remodel or home improvement project.