Many buildings today have been designed with energy conservation ideas.  A lot of them are LEED certified.  Leadership in Energy Efficient Design, also known as LEED has been a widely discussed topic in the building industry as a growing number of architects, building engineers, constructor, and owners have acknowledged the importance of keeping the environment green.  As an architect myself, I realized that through the process of building a building, materials such as wood, concrete, and steel can be easily used with unnecessary waste; through a non-environmental irresponsible design, excessive energy could be wasted in order to cool down or to heat up a poorly ventilated space.  Through a high ego and over achieved design, uncountable energy, materials, money and labor are put together in order to create the world highest skyscraper or an unthinkable cantilever, just to fulfill an architect’s vision, a developer’s ego, or a nation’s pride.   Being part of the building industry, we, as architects, are currently participating in wasting excessive energy; it is extremely crucial for us to raise the consciousness for conserving the earth’s energy and resources. 

Sustainable architecture is not a new concept.  People have been aware of the importance of keeping the environment green by generating environmentally conscious designs.  LEED certification is invented to be a quantitative measuring tool to give building a score in terms of how much it is being environmentally responsible.  By how many percentages the materials are recycled and reused?  How much energy is generated on site?  How efficient is the design in terms of conserving energy?  Is it built by local materials within 50 miles, which requires less energy to transport, or by foreign materials, which take more energy and labor to be transported and constructed?  A wide variety of factors are taken into account to determine a LEED certification, or in another word if it is considered a sustainable architecture. 

The building industry generates vast amount of waste each year.  To erect a building requires tremendous amount of energy and materials. Sure it can benefit society if built and designed correctly, however if we are not careful, it is very easy to put unnecessary energy and materials into such waste.  LEED provides us a measuring tape to evaluate how much energy and resources we can save if we choose to have a sustainable architecture.  But why do we have to depend on buildings or equipments to help us being sustainable?  If we visit a normal building that does not have a gray-water recycling system or a room requires excessive amount of energy to keep it comfortable, does that mean we lose the chance to be sustainable?  Or does that mean we have to waste more energy than necessary?

The answer is ‘No’!  It all comes down to ourselves, to each individual.  If our heart wants to be green, to be more environmental responsible, our action will reflect our decision.  If we decided to be sustainable, we do not need to live or work at a sustainable building.  We don’t need a LEED certified plaque and ribbon cutting to inform the world that says: “hey! I am being sustainable.”  It is the heart that tells us that next time when shopping for a vehicle, I go for the one that conserves more fuel and leaves a lower carbon footprint; next time when installing new floor, I go for eco friendly materials that have less negative impacts on our environment; next time when brushing my teeth, I only take a cup of water; next time when waiting the water from cold to hot, I save the unnecessary water for other use; examples can go on and on.  Now you see how important our heart can be to establish a sustainable world.
The concept of sustainable architecture is meeting the need today without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.  As we do not own the earth, we certainly do not own the right to conserve all its natural resources.  We certainly do not have the right to decide the faith of the earth.  But given what mankind today does, such as polluting the environment and extracting the earth’s natural resources in a greedy and ugly way, destroying ecosystems, rare species and raising the temperature of earth, mankind is slowing putting the earth into destruction.  Our future generations do not deserve the polluted world, as all other species on the earth do not deserve the chaos human created.  Being sustainable is the first step to reverse this process of destruction. And it is the easiest for each individual to endeavor to.  It only requires a passionate heart, a caring mind, and awareness for our environment.

Sure, sometimes we rely on machines to help us conserve the energy, but it is the heart to decide whether or not we choose to be sustainable.  If everybody has a sustainable heart, every building can be a sustainable architecture.  Let’s for example, put LEED ideas, the sustainable measuring tool, inside our heart to remind us that each time even the smallest things such recycling water or turning off unnecessary electricity can be the first step to lead to a sustainable world.