Going beyond green requires a timeless and shared vision of ecological design. Such a framework must encompass past efforts in solar and bioclimatic regional design and current metrics-based systems and place those efforts in a principle-based approach. Three leading authors of introductory books on sustainable design address this premise.

   Learning objectives:

• Distinguish and define competing terms such as green building, ecological design, and sustainable development
• Analyze the scale of sustainability: what buildings alone can and cannot address
• Test a structure of goal setting, strategy selection, and metrics creation for application to individual projects