With our challenges facing climate change, there is a greater need for sustainable design. It is important to make more environmentally conscious and efficient buildings to help minimize our effect on the planet. But, how do we do that?

A digital illustration of a futuristic city with green rooftops, tall glass buildings, surrounded by green parks, trees, a body of water, and pedestrians, under a partly cloudy sky with a yellow sun.

Net Zero Energy Building

A net zero energy building (NZEB) is a building that produces enough renewable energy to power itself. An NZEB uses a variety of strategies to minimize energy usage and to generate power using solar, wind, geothermal, and or hydro.

Illustration of a large blue house with multiple sections, a sloped roof, and a person walking on a green lawn in front of it. The sky is black with a large yellow sun.

Sustainable Design

Passive House Standard

Series of house icons with symbols representing weather and home systems: snowflake, wavy lines for humidity, lightning bolt, thermometer, fire, and water droplet.

The Passive House Standard is a guide that points a home design to be more comfortable and energy efficient. The criteria of a Passive House Standard helps houses regulate temperature, air circulation, and energy use.

Heating and Cooling Strategies

Heating and cooling strategies come into play for meeting the house standards and the client’s goals. Heating and cooling strategies design around exposure from the sun using active and passive methods.

Modern house with large yellow sloped roof, gray side wall with window, green bushes in front, and blue sky in background.

Thermal Solar

Diagram showing the process of solar thermal energy collection using a solar collector, with heat transfer to water for storing as hot water.
Illustration showing air flow entering through windows and circulating within a room to improve ventilation.

Rain Barrels

Rain barrels collect and filter rain runoff from a building. The water then can be used for other uses like gardening.

Rainwater harvesting system with a solar panel, collecting rainwater into a barrel, watering vegetables and plants in a garden.

Active methods are more mechanical and involve technology like solar thermal and photovoltaic solar panels. Passive methods are more structural and architectural, utilizing the form of the building to respond to the sun exposure.

Photovoltaic Solar Panels

A house with solar panels on the roof and a solar power inverter installed on the exterior wall, with sunlight shining on the panels.

Green Globes

Green Globes is a non-profit organization set “To reduce climate impacts by improving the built environment. We deliver education, standards, assessments, and certifications through an inclusive and global community.”

Life Cycle Assessment

Flowchart of lumber production: Trees are cut down, transported via truck to a sawmill, processed into planks, then assembled into a house frame.

“Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a process of evaluating the effects that a product has on the environment over the entire period of its life thereby increasing resource-use efficiency and decreasing liabilities. It can be used to study the environmental impact of either a product or the function the product is designed to perform.”

LEED

LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a certified rating system that looks at a buildings ability to “reduce contributions to global climate change,” “Protect and restore water sources,” “Promote sustainable and
regenerative material cycles,” “Enhance individual human health,” “Protect and enhance biodiversity
and ecosystem services,” and “Enhance community quality of life.”

WID Architecture and Interiors logo in green and gray colors.