Architecture plays a unique role in our everyday life. An architect has the expertise to combine your wants, needs, and aspirations with your goals of energy efficiency and sustainability to successfully match your project objectives.
Architecture affects people every moment of every day. We reside in homes where we sleep, cook, eat and spend time with our families; we typically travel to a building to work or a school to learn. Architects address requirements such as function, aesthetics, economics, environment, safety, and regulations and translate these into a home design that matches each owner’s personal taste and family dynamic.
The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards defines the role of an Architect as "the primary building professional qualified to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public through the enhancement of the quality of the built environment and the richness of space and form”. Buildings inhabited during those functions are essential to our lives and our health. Architects are ethically bound to continually better that built environment. For instance, Architecture entails more than just a physical building. It involves:
· Correctly interpreting the client’s dreams, visions, and objectives
· Exploring all possibilities
· Studying and responding to the site and its environment
· And translating all these into a home design that will exceed expectations
Sustainable architecture or green building is only a small part of a greater whole. It has been said many times that “sustainability” is a good short term goal for home design. Sustainability is simply the equilibrium, a tipping point where we are no longer damaging the planet that we inhabit with the effects of our daily lives through manufacturing, power production, construction, transportation, agriculture which affect our global ecosystem. Sustainability, by definition, is actually the point at which we cease to harm the environment. Beyond sustainability is where we begin to repair the damage done, which, ultimately, is the goal.
There are many great minds working toward both of these goals with ideas and solutions far greater than most people’s typical reach; however, anything that can be done better and is financially feasible should be done.
Green architects enrich the design and the project through integrity, conscientious design, environmental awareness, and the application of skills specific to their trade – keeping the ultimate goals of energy efficiency and sustainability clearly in view. Should your home design be anything less?
