PICTURE A GEODESIC DOME HIGH
in the Rockies. It’s covered with a transparent
film that lets the sunlight in and traps heat.
Even on the coldest winter days, the
temperature inside is warm enough to keep
fish alive and swimming in a small
pool and to grow vegetables without a
mechanical heating system. It’s only 25 feet in
diameter, but the dome can theoretically feed
a family of four.
“Sadly, Bucky died two weeks before he
was supposed to arrive at Windstar to spend
the summer working on the project,”
Browning recalls. “So while I met him and
talked with him, I did not get to work directly
with him.”
Despite this setback, the group persevered
and finished the full-size greenhouse. It was
operational for a few years, but by the late 1980s,
Windstar ran into financial troubles and had to
shut it down.
That early brush with integrated design,
however, stuck with Browning. He left
Windstar in 1987, but stayed in the Roaring
Fork Valley to pursue other opportunities,
including research and consulting work at
RMI. He was keenly interested in how
communities get built and the relationship of
that process to the environment. At RMI, he
finally came to the conclusion that it wasn’t
the architects who were making the
decisions—it was the developers.
“At one point, Bill said, ‘You know, I think we can change
the whole development paradigm from the bad guys who rip
up the land to a force for healing natural and human
communities for profit,’” recalls RMI cofounder and Chief
Scientist Amory Lovins.
Just like Bill Browning before them, RMI’s current interns and fellows
enjoy getting up close and personal with Bucky Fuller ’s geodesic dome.
Left to right: Sally DeLeon, David Anderson, Aristotle Yi, Alok Pradhan,
Jonah Bea-Taylor, Jamie Ponce, Drew Sloan, and Laurie Ramroth.
Browning then left RMI to get a graduate degree in real
estate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His thesis
included case studies of green developments in California and
argued that development projects that take a piecemeal
approach to green design cost more than those that take an
integrated approach. Designing for the whole system, he found,
could achieve more with no additional up-front cost.
With diploma in hand, Browning returned to RMI and in
1991 founded the Institute’s longstanding green building
consulting arm, Green Development Services (GDS).
“It’s somewhat strange that there was some push back from
some staff and the board when we were starting GDS,” Browning
says. “The thought was, ‘Real estate developers are not exactly the
kinds of people we want to work with.’ My response was, ‘If you
don’t like the way they’re doing things and you’re not willing to
engage them, then there’s not going to be any change.’”
Almost immediately, RMI
was hired to work on a variety
of green building projects.
But it wasn’t until a couple of
years later that GDS’s impact
was really felt. Prior to
starting GDS, RMI had been
an advisor to the original
American Institute of
Architects Committee on the
Environment, and there was
considerable momentum
around what would later be
called the “green building
movement.” Then, RMI was
brought into a meeting by the
Clinton Administration to
explore a lighting retrofit of
the White House.
“One of the things that
really made GDS’s reputation
was the ‘Greening of the
White House in 1993,’”
Browning recalls. “Initially,
the White House was
thinking they just needed a
lighting retrofit and some
recycling, then several
environmental consultants
and I convinced them they
could do much more,
including auditing the results.
That event, really, was the first large-scale green design charrette
ever held. It involved 130 people for three days. The U.S. Green
Building Council was formed about the same time, and many of
the people who helped form the USGBC were there. It was one
of the signature events of the green building community.”
Over the next decade GDS consulted on hundreds of green
building retrofits, new developments, and general sustainability
goals for such high-profile clients as the Pentagon, Wal-Mart
(the firm’s Eco Mart), and the organizing committee for the
2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney.
GDS was not only successful in influencing design, the team
of talented thinkers and designers was able to also inform the
building industry though books, CD-ROMs, speaking
engagements, and writing. Lovins notes that one of the most
important papers ever produced at RMI came from the hands of
Browning and DOE researcher Joseph Romm. In “Greening the
Building and the Bottom Line,” Browning and Romm were able to describe and support with eight case studies for the
first time the link between efficient green buildings and
human productivity.
“[It was] the notion that if you can see what you’re
doing, hear yourself think, breathe cleaner air, and feel
more comfortable, you’ll do more and better work,” notes
Lovins. “It was immensely valuable.”
Browning left RMI in 2004 when he was offered
the director of design and environment position at
Haymount, a 4,000-home “new town” in Virginia.
Nine months later, he formed his own consulting
firm with RMI colleague Jeff Bannon, which later
morphed into a new business with renowned green
architect Bob Fox: Terrapin Bright Green
(terrapinbrightgreen.com).
Today, Browning’s projects with Terrapin are
typically large-scale developments, not individual
buildings. One of his current efforts is a new city in
Korea that will boast some 50 million square feet of
commercial space and 50,000 residences. Another
project aims to redevelop a disturbed site in Arizona
with 20,000 residences and 20 million square feet
of commercial space. Even with this busy schedule,
he still manages to find time for research. He’s
currently leading a multi-year study that looks at
worker productivity issues in buildings, expanding
on the work he started at RMI in the 1990s.
“There’s an original curious mind there that’s
already done a career’s worth of important creativity,”
says Lovins. “And there’s a lot more left in him.”
