Sustainable Construction Green Building Design and Delivery

Abstract

The Roman architect, Vitruvius, once defined the purposes of architecture as creating commodity, firmness, and delight—roughly translated as usefulness, stability, and beauty. To that list, we now must add a fourth purpose, harmony, by which I mean the fit between buildings and the built environment broadly with the ecologies of particular places. In contrast to architecture as utilitarian or as form making, place making poses unique challenges. The first rule of place making is to ruin no other place. This requires considerable care, competence, and foresight in managing the upstream and the downstream effects of buildings from materials selection and construction to long-term operations and maintenance.