Living & Style HOME
ABOVE Irons and Fins, ECOhouse’s current project in Coronado, features overhangs that will help cool the home in summer . BELOW Irons and Fins maximizes space by spreading 11,000 square feet across three floors, including a basement.
a way that they gain more sun for natural heating, or they implement passive cooling systems to keep interior temps low with less energy. Projects need to meet a minimum environmental threshold to qualify as LEED-certified, with additional tiers for higher-scoring buildings, from silver through platinum. The city of San Diego maintains several LEED-certified buildings—but don’t be surprised if none of them are on your residential block. Because green projects cost more upfront to construct but have reduced maintenance costs over time, sustainable approaches are often used for big, industrial buildings, says Lauren Cook, executive director of the San Diego Architectural Foundation. In SD county, that includes a LEED gold–certified senior center, a silver-certified recreation center, and three fire stations ranging from silver to gold. Snapdragon Stadium and many structures at UCSD also employ green building approaches, because they are “a long-term investment for [institutions] to save money,” Cook adds. In the residential realm, Cook concedes, green buildings are generally going to be luxury homes. FitzSimons echoes this, adding, “People who can afford to design and build their own home typically have more resources”—meaning that they can shoulder the weightier construction costs sometimes associated with greener builds.
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