The Keating
by Pininfarina
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Rock Star Design

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The Built Environment Sets the Bar for Other Industries to Go Green

As most businesses and industries wake up to the significance of sustainable practices in what they present and what they produce, those in the built environment are already well ahead of the pack. According to Joseph Romm, Ph.D., editor of the online newsletter, ClimateProgress.org, Green-Build is "the rock show of clean tech space." The annual USGBC event, held in November and now in its sixth year, is the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green building. Romm, who is a senior fellow at the the Center for American Progress and author of Hell and High Water: Global Warming—The Solution and The Politics, spoke earlier this year at George Washington University’s Technology Transfer and Innovative Forum series. "Most people think it’s the factories and cars that cause air pollution, but in fact it’s buildings," he told attendees. "And that’s why the green building sector has exploded. Any technology that gets you a LEED point is a fast-growing technology."

In addition to joining the ranks of nearly 60,000 LEED-accredited professionals and earning LEED points for projects in a variety of building and design subspecialties, designers—and the industries that support their work—can earn recognition for design excellence through a number of awards programs, as well. One such competition, the Earth-Minded Awards, or EMAs, was launched last year by ASID in partnership with Hospitality Design Magazine to acknowledge, in particular, a project and a product in the hospitality sector that are "environmentally innovative, aesthetically pleasing, promote sustainability, have gone through a careful materials selection process, integrate efficiency and incorporate recycling and waste management."

"It is significant that the hospitality industry is embracing sustainability," said EMA judge Claire E. Tamburro, ASID, LEED AP. "The sheer volume of furnishings and materials we generate put us in the perfect position to effect great change to construction methods and protocols and ensure that sustainability goals are met."

Renovation—The Original Form of Recycling
The Keating Hotel in San Diego, created by Italian design house Pininfarina Extra, received the inaugural Hospitality Project EMA. Major furnishings in the 35-room boutique hotel, housed in a circa 1890 granite-and-brick building in downtown San Diego, are made from re-useable and recyclable natural materials. Designers recaptured and reused the building’s original structural timber and steel and kept as many exposed brick and stone walls as possible. The hotel features energy-saving motion-sensing devices and fluorescent lighting, on-site laundry facilities (that use bio-friendly detergents), and a state-of-the-art non-chemical water softening system. Hard-surface flooring minimizes the need for vacuums and harsh cleaning solvents. The building is owned and managed by The Keating Hotel Group, which is a paperless company with its own private recycling services. Details are available at www.thekeating.com.