If you’re one of many who identify “green” buildings as anecological necessity but as an aesthetic blight, you’re hardly alone.Architect Rebecca Henn, a juror in this year’s American Institute ofArchitecture competition for top environmental designs, noted, “The bigbox store that could have been an exemplar of sustainability was,frankly, really ugly…. If we don’t hold beauty and sustainability asequal cultural commitments, then we might as well hand over ourlicenses and call ourselves aesthetic consultants.”

Architect James Wines, author of “Green Architecture,” also cuts tothe chase: “{W}ith-out art, the whole idea of sustainability fails.People will never want to keep an aesthetically inferior buildingaround, no matter how well stocked it is with cutting-edge thermalglass, photovoltaic cells, and zero-emissions carpeting.”

Whatever their aesthetics, the number of sustainable buildings hasgrown exponentially, according to the US Green Building Council, aneducational clearinghouse and certification agency for such projects.The United States market in green-building products and services hassoared from more than $7 billion in 2005 to more than $12 billiontoday, the council reports. So, ready or not, expect to see sustainablebuildings wherever you reside.

And that raises the question: How can architecture most effectivelyoffer us the beauty we crave in our everyday lives – while beingprotective of the environment? Global warming is catalyzed bygreenhouse gases, nearly half of which are generated by creating andmaintaining architecture. Given that reality, it might seem downrightsuperficial to care about whether our buildings can be beautiful.

As journalist Virginia Postrel insists in her book, “The Substanceof Style: How How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce,Culture & Consciousness,” “We want styling, decoration, adornment”– but not at the price of a loss of utility or ecological disaster.

The cliché of ugly green architecture contains, like many oldclichés, a seed of truth. Among sustainable designs that many havefound abhorrent artistically:

• Industrial shipping containers starkly stacked in a Mondrian-likemaze with minimal ornamentation. An official from ISBU {IntermodalSteel Building Units & Container Homes} wrote in a design blog, “Wefind the general public love the idea of an easy-to-use cube. They loveputting many together to create a normal-size home. But they don’t wanta home that looks like a shipping container.”

• Building exteriors highlighting extreme, rough-hewn surfaces thatsuggest neoprimitive cave or mud dwellings, or high-tech buildings withsci-fi-scaled jutting rooftop solar collectors. The Los Gatos, Calif.,town council has denied homeowners solar-power systems that aren’t thesame pitch as the roof and insist that they should be hidden from view.

• Structures imitating animal or geological forms that areaesthetically at odds with conventionally designed architecture in thearea. You might speculate that only a building’s owner would caredeeply about whether the surfaces of the building are artfullypleasing. Guess again. In architecture, a successful project entails acareful coordination of architects and engineers and constructionworkers. An improperly installed living-room window in a home mightlook odd, creating a mild cosmetic blemish – but worse, an associatedheating and cooling loss might arise. And a wall’s durability could beaffected by the improper installation. Buildings are like houses ofcards; a mishap by one subcontractor that looks like a surface scarmight seriously weaken a crucial subsystem, or a whole structure.

“One of the more challenging aspects of sustainable
features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/07/11/green-architecture%E2%80%99s-new-goal-stylish-sustainability/