“we were becoming good at standards but not very good at implementing them…low energy living is 10% technology and 90% lifestyle”
This is a quote from a thoughful critique on Passive House, which is big on creating a technologically complex house that uses very little energy. But they point out that people’s lifestyle is much more important. Basically they are saying that gadgets don’t make the person.
We are very interested in making green Brooklyn brownstone renovations that are high on energy efficiency. But we increasingly realize that our building needs to help change peoples’ habits. Things like making it easier for them to recycle with a well designed green kitchen. Or creating an intelligent lighting design that makes it easy for them to shut lights off (or they shut off automatically). Or desigining with a lot of natural light so they don’t need light in the first place.
Things like that that change the lifestyle of the person have a huge impact on a green brownstone.