Sustainable What a tecture?

What do you do Molly and what have you been doing in Oregon?

Many of you have professed your utter confusion about what I do, so I am dedicating this post to you, particularly my mother and my dear friend DE who has been the recipient of my cough since we were ten.

I work in sustainable architecture. Don't look at me like that- I'm going to explain. On a basic level, sustainable building means building with the least impact to the environment. So, sustainable building is architecture built the smallest carbon and environmental footprint possible. This means considering the buildings carbon footprint, site selection (i.e. is it near public transportation or must everyone drive there), brownfield redevelopment and habitat protection (does it make the site, and therefore world better and less polluted or more so), provide space for bicycles so that people will be incentivized to bike to work and maximize open space. Are you getting the picture?

Other areas of sustainable architecture include water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, design, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. Those are pretty self explanatory except for indoor environmental quality. This is a fancy way to say it is a measure of the air and light in the building. The objective is to create an environment in which people have greater productivity because adequate ventilation, clean air (no smoke), outside pollutants and natural light dominate. Seems intuitive, huh? Surprisingly, there is an agency, called the USGBC (US Green Building Council) that actually must create these standards because despite caring immensely about the build environment (by nature of being) all architects do not necessarily gravitate toward these objectives, and building owners do not really care about the health of their residents.

However, the big picture, is that after reading this blog, written in the true form of a sleep deprived member of my profession, do you understand what I do?