A Whole-System Approach to High Performance Green Buildings

Authoritative and ambitious, A Whole-System Approach is a valuable resource for anyone involved in the design or construction of buildings intended to embody the principles of sustainable development.

Dr. David Strong, Victoria Burrows, and 22 contributing experts have assembled a clear and systematic guide to creating and operating efficient green buildings. With a global perspective, it will help guide next-generation buildings that will use little or no energy and less money while keeping occupants happy, healthy, and productive and the world richer, fairer, cooler, and safer.

A Whole-System Approach to High Performance Green Buildings is a great reference for both practitioners and students pursuing engineering and architecture. The well-researched case studies on best practices and latest green building developments make a compelling case for project teams to take an integrated approach to sustainable building design, construction and operation. We are honoured that the BCA Green Mark 2015 scheme is recognised as an enabler of such integrative design.

This book is an excellent and authoritative resource for anyone planning to develop, design, construct or maintain a sustainable building. The book contains much invaluable practical guidance, which if followed, will help to deliver the next generation of genuinely high performance green buildings.

In this era of innovation and rapid change, this book highlights some of the challenges we face as a sector in increasing productivity and quality while decreasing our impact. Overcoming these challenges can only be achieved by changing our perspectives. It’s hard to see the whole system when you work in only a small part of it. This book provides a refreshing and honest overview from many different perspectives, with practical examples of what has and has not worked on projects all over the world.

It’s been almost 60 years since the powerful idea of integrative thinking was introduced by the Texas firm, Caudill Rowlett and Scott. The imperative of sustaining our planet is now asking much more of us in the building professions. It is past time to ramp up our skills. This book by David Strong and Victoria Burrows offers the most thorough, detailed, next generation refinement of how to think about green building design as whole system. It challenges conventional green thinking and guides the structuring and realization of a process that is both efficient and effective - all in service of economy, health, quality of life, and deeply meaningful and desirable shelter.

The imperative for highly efficient, healthy and productive sustainable buildings has never been more evident, but despite the fact that the green building movement has been mainstream for more than a decade, spanning over 100 countries around the world, there is still a huge gap between the aspirations and the real performance of most new developments. This comprehensive guide goes beyond the theory of whole system approaches to delivering high performance; critically it is informed by the authors’ many years of practical experience and lessons learnt. It balances clear explanation with solutions that emphasise simplicity over technological complexity. Above all it focuses on delivering buildings that work for the people who occupy them - because sustainable buildings are ultimately those that will stand the test of time.

David has spent a distinguished career questioning and challenging our assumptions around buildings and the built environment. Helping set new paradigms and standards along the way. The book is an invaluable contribution to our future as an industry.