Green Interior Design
Our Commitment
Jaan Ferree is aligned with and committed to growth of the Environmental Design movement as it impacts architectural design. For Jaan, creating living spaces that include sustainable interior finishes, point of use hot water heaters, and non-toxic building materials makes a great deal of sense for future generations.
Economic Benefits of Environmental Design
Consumers also benefit from economic savings in the short and long term with many Environmental Design concepts. For example, to consider building orientation (also a concern of Feng Shui) can lower overall energy costs; low VOC (volatile organic compound) paints and sustainable interior finishes all help consumers and the environment alike. Research shows green buildings can improve productivity, lower absenteeism, increase retail sales, improve health, and more.
Since Jaan frequently partners with architectural design firms in their work, she is well informed about the Environmental Design movement, and she collaborates well with architects who engage in this type of building and design.
Thoughts on The Not So Big House
Sarah Susanka of The Not So Big House fame, implementation of her interior design ideas for contemporary homes has influenced my own approach to interior design. I find many of the main ideas in her work useful in my day-to-day design work with clients.
The earth is faced with a growing population and limited natural resources. Meanwhile, trends in luxury home building dictate the amount of space in new homes can begin at 4,000-5,000 square feet. Sarah Susanka believes, as I do, that luxurious, functional, and aesthetically pleasing spaces can be created in half of this square footage, or less. In an age when overbuilding is costing more in natural resources and energy consumption, Sarah Susanka suggests that downsizing, coupled with better interior design, is the solution. She illustrates her solutions in The Not So Big House Collection and Not So Big Solutions for Your Home.
Susanka's work has struck a nerve. Her books and her interior design concepts are beginning to find a larger audience and some momentum. Susanka's ideas are finding an audience with Baby Boomers and Generations X and Y. The interest in her work spans generations because Susanka's ideas resonate with their own core value systems.
Baby Boomers finds less space more appealing since grown children are now living on their own. Some Boomers are living on less income and want to conserve limited personal and natural resources. Yet this generation also wants to live luxuriously. The answer is to simplify their interior spaces, and concentrate on the quality of the interior rather than the quantity of square footage.
Generation X and Y are finding the cost of luxury housing to be prohibitive. They are faced with living and working in the same space or raising small families in less space then their own parents had. Both generations X and Y are concerned with conserving natural resources and building and designing with green materials and cost saving objectives in mind.
I applaud Sarah Susanka's concepts. For this reason, I've chosen to align myself with her ideas by listing my website at www.notsobighouse.com in the Home Professionals Directory. In my interior design work, I strive to create smaller, well- designed home interiors. Through interior design, I implement more personal, easier to maintain interior spaces for the home. Susanka's ideas also overlap with my commitment to green interior design and the creation of sacred space within the home.
North Carolina has adopted the Healthy Built Homes certification for new home construction
The NC Healthy Built Homes Program provides a certificate for homes meeting "green home guidelines" built by residential builders who practice sustainable, high performance building strategies making the home a comfortable, healthy and affordable place that reduces energy and water usage, promotes renewable energy use and helps protect the land where the home is built.
In a Healthy Built Home, building materials and processes are selected to reduce pollution and the waste of natural resources during the manufacturing and construction phases and throughout the life of the home. The builder is encouraged to provide homeowner education about the high performance features of the home and provide local resources for "green" living."
Ferree is also deeply interested in incorporating green building and sustainable practices into her interior design. Use of natural, non-toxic materials in the interior design of a home creates a space in balance with nature.
Sustainable design is providing for ourselves while making sure that future generations can do the same. Green building combined with green interior design also saves money.
Ferree is a member of the Green Building Council in Asheville, North Carolina, where she has taken seminars on the Healthy Built Home. She is also an allied member of the Asheville, North Carolina American Association of Architects and is recommended interior designer by Sarah Suskana's Not So Big House website.
