14 Sep Intelligent Design

Picture above: Architect’s rendering of our new project in Great Barrington.

What can happen when the noble desire to be energy efficient trumps intelligent design.

For many years we branded ourselves as a green building company, and we defined being green as making the buildings we worked on as energy efficient as possible. Being green and making our buildings energy efficient are still very important to us, but we are stepping away from calling ourselves a green building company. We have stopped doing so for a couple of reasons. First of all, there is the problem “green washing.” So many products and services out there today are calling themselves green, that “green” is losing any meeting. A second reason comes from a more wholistic way of thinking about design. We want to build energy efficient homes, but we also understand that energy efficiency is just one piece of the puzzle. For us, it goes without saying that a well-designed house must be an energy-efficient house. But it must also meet other equally important design criteria. It must fit into its surroundings. It must be well proportioned and pleasing to the eye; and it must function well, and strike a balance between utilitarian flow and striking visual interest. In order to capture all of these important elements, we now speak of the business not just as a green business, but an intelligent one.

We team up with architects and designers who understand the importance of intelligent design. On our most recent project, we are teaming up with the architects at Bright Built Homes in Portland Maine to build a very thoughtfully designed, net zero-capable home in Great Barrington. Future blog posts will detail the building process.