Green Architecture

Being in the sustainable public discourse class, I attended one of the public lecture entitled “Green Building Basics: Where we are” by Bill Brown who is the Director in the Office of Sustainability at IU Bloomington.” There were many components in the lecture which were persuasive to the audience why green architecture is benefited to everyone. The claim of the speaker is to persuade the audience that they are not merely discussing the saving energy plans but they are making more and more green buildings. The purpose of the lecture was to let people be aware of the issue and to inform them as well about how many buildings they have built using the Green Theme. Bill Brown is an architect and in his office there are many other architect experts who work together to make IU campus greener and environmentally safe.
Professor Brown first started with defining “sustainability” and according to him, “sustainability” is “learning to thrive within our means. He also showed the various pictures of green homes he has built. He used Harris’s move “coming to terms” when he mentioned “It’s all about green” and defined clearly what the presentation is going to be about.
To come across a point that green architecture are useful in multiple ways, he showed the Las Vegas fountain which is the water supply, the electricity producer and also a form of decoration which was very fascinating to me. Throughout his presentation, there were many slides of the different buildings he has worked on such as different libraries and some homes and commercial buildings. He explained in detail how those libraries, mostly in Indiana, are saving the day light, and the electricity. He also used the architecture related terminology and some material they have used. In the film “The 11th Hour”, there are interviews of experts and their opinions whereas, in Professor Brown’s lecture, there is only him talking and mostly about the design of architecture. The design of architecture is very important in the green buildings. Similarly in the film “The 11th Hour”, there a whole chapter entitled “Sustainable Design”.
Some statistics were also interesting to know. He mentioned that 31 states out of 50 in the U.S.A. have approved the green architecture plans. Most states are now realizing that some steps should be taken to help the planet live longer and the people need to live a sustainable life in order to maintain our planet. There are some criteria about the green buildings which he compared with the food facts. He showed all the elements that go in the green architecture such as different certification needed, and materials needed. He mentioned some of the procedure to make a normal building into a green building. He talked about how a certification is needed from the LEED organization to make a normal building into a green building.
One important aspect of green buildings is the cost. Professor Brown was aware that most people would argue how expensive it is to build a green building. That’s why he stated that it cost around $1.4 million on 64 green projects where as to build a normal building it would be roughly the same amount around $1.2 million. So Professor Brown claimed that it doesn’t make a big difference cost wise to have greener architecture. I agree with him because it we have a green building, we would save more electricity and water usage.
Toward the end, Professor Brown showed that there are two green buildings on IU Bloomington campus and they are working toward pursuing LEED certification for other buildings as well. Walter Ong’s theory of audience construction was well used since professor Brown included three different aspects of green architecture which were of people, environment, and economics. The audience was not only students but the public. He left the audience with a question, “can we design a building that saves more day light energy? Can we design a building that produces pure water than it consumes?” At the end, he answered everyone’s’ questions and showed lot of expertise in this area. I think, not only myself but many people in the audience was persuaded that green buildings are something to look forward since Professor Brown’s lecture was very effective by all means. He really gave a detailed explanation of how it works and how we can make it work.