What is high performance green building?

Welcome to the Spring 2009 High Performance Green Building Course, hosted by Maharishi University of Management's Sustainable Living program!

In response to questionable claims about the green status of a building, several standards have emerged that allow third party verification of building green features. The best known is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)

High Performance means that a building uses less energy than other buildings of similar size and type of construction. Reductions of 90 % from code requirements are possible, and some buildings generate more energy than they consume.


Buildings and the built environment are of great concern to the sustainability movement - buildigns use about 50% of the energy that flows through the US economy. Contemporary patterns of human settlement (like urban sprawl) waste huge amounts of energy and human life by requiring energy and life consuming transportation systems.

Green buildings can use conventional materials like dimensional lumber, concrete, plastics, and steel, or they can use more natural and less processed materials like straw bale (and other plant fibers), earth, stone, and round wood. When a building is made primarily of lighty processed natural materials, the process is called natural building.

A little about me, Lonnie Gamble, the instructor for this course. First, I want to make it clear that I do not consider myself a professional builder. I do have quite a lot of experience constructing buildings, but most of them have been for myself, although I have built few small projects professionally for others. I have built several homes, shops, and other buildings for myself, and founded Abundance Ecovillage. Every couple of years I do a major building project, often involving natural and locally sourced materials.
A little more about me and building: I come from a family of eccentric "do-it-yourselfers" - my Dad built a 40 foot sailboat in the back yard when I was a kid, and he built a passive solar home in the 1950's from one of the early MIT designs (located in Beverly, Massachusetts, it was one of the most comfortable houses I have ever lived in). My Dad cut down all the trees to build the boat and the house, and he had them turned into boards at a local water powered saw mill. I currently live in a straw bale house, and I have never felt shy about experimenting with building things. I have been involved with building for quite a while - in 1982, I built a high performance superinsulated house in Maine with 12 inch thick R-40 walls and an R-60 roof.