5 green building trends for 2020

By Ken Edelstein on March 14, 2019

The answers clustered around one larger issue: Climate change. There’s a growing sense that responses to our existential dilemma will take center stage among architects, engineers and builders. There’s also a spreading conviction that professionals who recognize this reality will be better prepared for the future.

As Jim Nicolow, director of sustainability for the architecture firm Lord Aeck Sargent put it: “It’s no longer something scary that might happen in the future. It’s something scary happening now.”

The industry leaders we contacted over the last couple of months did mention other trends. Recurring themes included:

Equity — It’s the oft forgotten leg on the sustainability stool (the two others being economy and environment). Architect Jason Jewhurst of Bruner/Cott in Boston says rising concerns about equity is a hot topic “on all fronts in our profession — work place, projects, programming, design process.“ 

Certification fatigue —  This has long been a complaint about the LEED platform in particular. As one respondent put it: “Design teams and owners are weary from filling out a lot of documentation and jumping through hoops to earn a certification.”