The atrium in the new LEED Gold EPA headquarters in Denver.
Using today’s technologies, design teams need to discover how to integrate and optimize building performance within available budgets rather than designing “as usual” and incrementally making the building more efficient, Greg Franta, RMI Senior VP and Principal Architect, told the inaugural Annual Meeting of the Corporate Eco Forum in San Francisco.
"The latter nearly always costs more," he said.
During the discussion on Money Making Eco Action in Facilities and Buildings, Franta emphasized that design excellence in architecture includes high performance buildings.
The discussion participants included senior executives from Global 500 companies, who together generate more than $2 trillion in revenues annually.
Included were the founder and CEO of IDEO, the head of corporate real estate for Deutsche Bank GTO, chief environmental strategist for Microsoft, and the vice president of Warner Brothers.
Franta’s discussion was part of multiple sessions going on during the forum, designed to help companies close the “eco-strategy gap” -- the gap between pursuing sustainability strategies and executing them.
The event is the firs step toward developing a larger community of leading executives taking collaborative action to move corporate eco initiatives forward.
See the EcoFourm website for more information on the conference.
