A day trip of Sydney brings me to this famous opera house.
I’m in Sydney Australia this week for the second portion of my research travels. It’s hard, but I’ll skip the parts about how beautiful and alive the City of Sydney and the surrounding areas are. I met with a Green Building Council of Australia representative that touched on a topic that many have brought to my attention since I first thought up the research topic. It’s the issue of comparing a holistic approach type of building design system (LEED and Green Star) to a more focused approach like that of the Monolithic Dome.
LEED and Green Star (GS) look at several different parameters in certifying a building with their green stamp of approval. These parameters include water efficiency measures, building location for several aspects of sustainable development, indoor air quality, the allocation and choice of materials and resources used for construction, greenhouse gas emissions and of course, energy efficiency measures. The Monolithic Dome design doesn’t focus on all of these aspects; it focuses on energy efficiency. So how than does one justify comparing the two different approaches?
The fact that energy efficiency is such an important aspect of sustainable development automatically triggered my thoughts to wonder why the energy efficiency measures used in Monolithic Domes are not being incorporated into third party certified buildings, like those certified by LEED and GS. Furthermore, I wondered how much energy efficiency is achieved in buildings with LEED and GS certification given that the possible credits in this aspect of sustainable development are not mandatory or an inevitable part of the building design, as it is in Monolithic Domes. A significant savings in energy is perhaps not the norm in third party certified buildings because applicants must simply meet a minimum energy efficiency requirement before achieving certification as a green/sustainable development.
This was the basis of formulating my research topic: to understand if a Monolithic Dome, which incorporates energy efficiency during the construction phase of the building envelope, is more or less energy efficient than a green certified building, which allows the option of achieving energy efficiency by using a variety of strategies, as in LEED and GS. Most people I describe this thought process to nod in agreement, but I truly wonder if after all is said and done they still think I’m wasting my time.