Green Building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — the complete building life cycle.

The related concepts of sustainable development and sustainability are integral to green building especially at La Gardena. Our effective green building can lead to our homeowners having reduced operating costs by using less energy and water, improved public and occupant health due to improved indoor air quality, and reduced environmental impacts by, for example, lessening storm water runoff and the heat island effect.

Green building brings together a vast array of practices and techniques to reduce and ultimately eliminate the impacts of buildings on the environment and human health. But effective green buildings are more than just a random collection of environmental friendly technologies. They require careful, systemic attention to the full life cycle impacts of the resources embodied in the building and to the resource consumption and pollution emissions over the building's complete life cycle.

Aesthetics that Please the Eye and Nature

On the aesthetic side of sustainable design is the philosophy of designing a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site. Building materials typically considered to be 'green' include rapidly renewable plant materials like bamboo and straw, lumber from forests certified to be sustainably managed, dimension stone, recycled stone, recycled metal, and other products that are non-toxic, reusable, renewable, and/or recyclable. Building materials should be extracted and manufactured locally to the building site to minimize the energy embedded in their transportation.

Low-impact building materials are used wherever feasible at La Gardena: for example, insulation may be made from low VOC (volatile organic compound)-emitting materials such as recycled denim or cellulose insulation, rather than the building insulation materials that may contain carcinogenic or toxic materials such as formaldehyde.