Green Design Tools: Building Values and Politics into Material Choices

Abstract

Green design tools are emerging as a new response to the dilemmas that architects and designers face in preventing the toxic impacts of building construction. Environmental health advocates, scientists, and consulting firms are stepping in to provide designers with new tools—including science-based assessment methods, standards, databases, and software—intended to help structure and inform decision-making in sustainable design. We argue that green design tools play an important but largely uninvestigated role in giving designers new forms of influence while mediating how designers’ values are translated into actual design choices. Tool makers embed their own values and politics into the construction of the tools, which function as “black boxes”—their internal operations are understood as less important than their outputs for informing sustainable design. Using the green building movement as a case study, we consider three tools for selecting environmentally benign materials: the GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals, Pharos, and the Health Product Declaration. Examining controversies about the scientific validity of green design tools, we suggest that they are rooted in value conflicts and tensions in the politics of chemical knowledge. Transparent engagement with values and politics among tool developers and users could strengthen the legitimacy and credibility of green design tools.

Visual Sensor Image Deconstruction in Constructing Green Building Design Space Adjustment Construction Strategy

“…The human eye sees objects in three dimensions and can also estimate the distance of the objects seen [ 15 ]. However, human eyes are prone to visual deviation.…”

Research on a Framework for Sustainable Campus Eco-Architecture Selection: Taking a Taiwan High School as an Example

“…(1) reducing the number of investigations; (2) expressing the opinions of experts more completely; (3) through the fuzzy application of theory, expert knowledge will be more in line with rationality and needs and (4) more economical in terms of time and cost [47]. Generally, the fuzzy Delphi method can be used to carry out the following three main steps: (1) establishing an evaluation factor set that affects decision-making; (2) collecting the opinions of experts or decision-making groups, and (3) calculating the evaluation value of the fuzzy Delphi method.…”

“…The purpose of this research is to construct sustainable building evaluation indicators suitable for Taiwan. Based on the above literature evaluation scope and content analysis, it was found that most evaluation tools cover issues such as the internal environment of the building, the area of the building base, and the surrounding environment of the building [45,47]. The purpose of this study is to further generalize and construct a sustainable campus ecological building index that is suitable for Taiwan's geographical characteristics and has a sustainable conceptual framework such as environmental, social, and economic aspects [17,45].…”