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Guidelines in Development for Residential Remodeling
In the last ten years, nearly 30 million American homes have undergone renovation or remodeling projects. Assuming the trend continues, the next ten years will produce at least 30 million more renovated or remodeled homes. Only this time, residential designers and contractors, as well as homeowners, will be armed with a dynamic new information tool: Regreen.
The Regreen program is currently being developed by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in collaboration with a team of more than 30 experts (including staff at BuildingGreen). By the spring of 2008, the Regreen program should consist of three parts: a manual called Regreen Guidelines, the draft of which is available for public comment through December 10, 2007; learning programs to support the use of the manual; and print and electronic resources for both professionals and consumers.
The Regreen Guidelines are designed to be comprehensive but not standalone, and project-based but not project-specific. In other words, they should be used to inform a project but should not be a project’s only source of information. The manual is organized into ten types of remodeling projects, including a kitchen and an energy-efficiency retrofit.
Penny Bonda, FASID, founding chair of the ASID Sustainable Design Council, explains that there has been a marketplace need for green guidance for residential design, similar to what LEED for Commercial Interiors affords commercial designers. However, Bonda and her colleagues concluded that a rating system would simply not work for the residential
remodeling market. “Residential remodeling can be anything from changing the paint color to building an addition,” says Bonda. “So we gave up the idea of ‘LEED for Residential Interiors’ fairly early and instead began to work on the concepts that have revolved around [Regreen].”
Regreen advisor Victoria Schomer, president of Green Built Environments, a North Carolina-based interior design firm, is thrilled about the new product because of its ability to unite all the trades associated with residential remodeling. Schomer believes that “you can build or remodel the greenest building in the world,” but that it won’t necessarily have any positive influence on the consumer’s lifestyle. She feels that Regreen creates a dialogue between building scientists and interior designers and homeowners. “We need to remember that those buildings have to serve the homeowners so that they can practice a green lifestyle, which will ultimately translate into a greener planet. Regreen connects the dots so that a green home can support a green lifestyle.”
– Rachel Navaro
For more information:
Regreen
www.regreenprogram.org
(for professionals)
www.greenhomeguide.org
(for consumers)
December 1, 2007
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