Interviews

About DGNB International certification system
October 04, 2010

Christine Lemaitre

"It is the sole system worldwide that considers 50 years of a building by means of a life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCC), thus giving importance to the environmental impact and the relevant costs" - tell us Dr. Christine Lemaitre about DGNB International

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Robert Watson: humans’ capacity for love and generosity, compassion and creativity far outweigh the negative actions and impulses that have us in our current predicament
September 07, 2010

Robert Watson

Interview with Robert Watson, one of the pioneers of the modern Green Building Movement. He founded the LEED Green Building Rating System of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) in 1994 and was its Founding Chairman until 2006. Mr. Watson is the Chairman, CEO and Chief Scientist of The EcoTech International Group (ETI) and its subsidiaries EcoTech China and EcoTech India, which he launched in 2007 to meet the demand for green building technologies and services in China, India and the United States.

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Green Building in USA
May 02, 2010

Erik Thor Hartten

Interview with Erik Thor Hartten, professional Green building design consultant and LEED® AP BD&C, living in New York, USA.

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Investment Expenses in “Green” Development in Russia
September 25, 2009

Sergey Ivanovich Burtsev

There is a firmly held opinion in Russian development practice, that energy-effective construction is very cost-intensive, and the pay-back period of modern technologies can be measured in terms of decades. This is simply not true.

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Goals and Tasks of Green Construction in World Practice
September 25, 2009

Sergey Viktorovich Tsytsin

At the end of the XX century, western society enriched itself with one more value: a healthy way of life. Following this life style meant stopping smoking, training in fitness clubs and the construction of ecologically clean (meaning buildings that are not harmful for yourself or for nature), homes.

Green development at first appeared on an individual level. Europeans began to show a colossal interest in returning to traditional values, first and foremost in the context of using natural materials and products

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Green Development With LEED USGBC – a Sure Foundation for Russian Practice
September 09, 2009

Sergey Ivanovich Burtsev

The global economy makes it possible for representatives of any kind of business to identify and make use of the most efficient methods of organizing trade and production from experience gained by others.

Over the past few years in the construction industry in the US and a host of other European countries, standards which can measure the and energy effectiveness and environmental impact of buildings have come into use. This is a manifestation of a new philosophy in business practice.

This philosophy is based on the idea that all professionals working on the creation of a building have to take total responsibility for what they are doing. There are three basic goals: the building must be as comfortable as possible for all those who spend time inside it or on the territory surrounding; the building must reduce negative effects on the environment to a minimum; the building should create maximum yield for the owner.

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LEED As A Method of Defense for The Developer And The Investor
September 03, 2009

Sergey Viktorovich Tsytsin

Commercial organizations which invest in construction are always interested in maximum return of their investments.

Whilst financing the planning process, Russian developers and investors can only assess the general level of expenses required for key engineering systems, and remained uninformed about the quality of the product which these engineering systems create.

A building can be planned, built and approved for use by relevant government departments. However if at the stage of planning a small details has been omitted, for example, the heat generated by the sun’s rays has not been properly assessed, the building becomes unsuitable for human use.

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What LEED Means for a Planning Team
September 02, 2009

Sergey Ivanovich Burtsev

Design of residential and non-residential buildings requires an immense amount of knowledge and great responsibility. In Russia, state quality control on a government level exists for buildings which are registered for public usage; controls which ensure citizens’ safety.

Be this as it may, Russia has still not created a regulatory framework that can ensure comfort both inside buildings and in surrounding grounds, and which can guarantee the absence of a negative impact on people’s health and on nature.

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