Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Welcome!

Welcome to the inaugural post of A Green Building Theology! My name is Sara Sweeney and I am a registered architect, LEED AP, GreenFaith Fellow (in religious/spiritual environmental leadership), self-professed building science geek and committed environmentalist. I am also founder and principal of EcoVision Green Solutions Services LLC, a sustainable design & construction research, education and consulting firm.

We are in the midst of a huge paradigm shift, with respect to how we design and build, and how we connect our world –the built environment, with the natural world –a world not of our making yet with which we are inherently connected and bound to at a deeply spiritual level. But we don’t always recognize this. Even with all the tremendous good being done through the green building revolution, in many respects we still view building (as a verb) as merely an action and an activity, and buildings (as a noun) as commodities. Yet the built environment -what we build and how we build, is a direct reflection of our values, a snapshot of who we are and what we believe as humans at any given moment.

This blog seeks to look at green building from the spiritual perspective and create and pose a theology around green building. It is based on the belief that building green has the power to inspire change, affect well-being, strengthen values, foster and build community and most important, connect us back to Earth and Spirit; we are already seeing evidence of this. I’ll draw from all sorts of religious and spiritual traditions, practices, teachings and writings as much as Thoreau or Leopold or Hawken. I’ll also look at all aspects of building, from process to site to materials to energy and resource use (and abuse).

I hope you will find this blog interesting, thought-provoking and informative. Thanks for reading!

Peace –
Sara

5 comments:

Shari Shapiro said...

Congrats on the launch! Good luck!

Sara Sweeney said...

Thank you Shari!

Frank A. Edmands+ said...

Great start. I appreciate your thesis and look forward to your postings. I am in the process of encouraging a Board to green their facility - your initial thoughts were very helpful.

jetsongreen said...

Wow Sara, great idea for a blog! Can't wait to read more ...

Sara Sweeney said...

Thanks Preston -and thanks for reading!