green design

Sustainable design (ecodesign, green design or environmental design) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment and services to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability.

Gertner Architects have embraced sustainable design practices not only because they're good for the environment, but also because they're good for business and are crucial in order to be competitive in today's global economy.

Benefits include:

• Energy efficiency: use manufacturing processes and produce products which require less energy

• Quality and durability: longer-lasting and better-functioning products will have to be replaced less frequently, reducing the impacts of producing replacements

• Healthy Buildings: sustainable building design aims to create buildings that are not harmful to their occupants nor to the larger environment. An important emphasis is on indoor environmental quality, especially indoor air quality

Both urban and rural planning can benefit from including sustainability as a central criterion when laying out roads, streets, buildings and other components of the built environment.

Sustainable architecture attempts to reduce the collective environmental impacts during the production of building components, during the construction process, as well as during the lifecycle of the building (heating, electricity use, carpet cleaning etc).

This design practice emphasizes efficiency of heating and cooling systems, alternative energy sources such as solar hot water, appropriate building siting, reused or recycled building materials, on-site power generation (solar technology, ground source heat pumps, wind power), rainwater harvesting for gardening and washing, and on-site waste management such as green roofs that filter and control stormwater runoff.

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