the legacy we leave
Ringed by mountains, the Galisteo Basin Preserve south of Santa Fe offers pristine open space and a unique land development plan focused on conservation.
You’ve got to love both the optimism and the endurance of the green-building movement. Since the early 1980s, it’s been an uphill rock-roll for the faithful shoving hard against economic and social forces. As the 1970s solar energy boom faded into memory, New Mexico builders who cut their teeth on solar adobes shifted away to satisfy changing tastes among home buyers. Although builders, architects, and designers weren’t touting things like superinsulation, passive solar gain, or gray water systems as their primary marketing pitch, many found ways to continue innovating in what would become known as green building. As the movement gained momentum and a clear identity, New Mexico builders emerged at the front of the sustainability wave with a resume of experience turning green principles into bricks and mortar.
Now as buyers in ever-increasing numbers demand low-impact siting, energy efficiency, water conservation, sustainable materials, and a healthy indoor environment, the building industry in New Mexico has responded in a widening variety of ways: big homes, small homes, high-density urban living, country living, remodels, production homes on tract lots. You can’t swing a hammer without hitting a green home—and don’t take the sales agent’s word for it. These certified-green houses have reams of documentation to back up their claims of sustainability.
For visual proof, just look at the winners of our Green Home of the Year Awards competition (“Better all the time”) and our feature on sustainable land developments and neighborhoods (“On location”) in this issue. Our awards competition honors winners in a range of market niches, from an Artistic Homes production house, which won an award for indoor environmental quality, to the exclusive Santa Fe Dream Home, which won for environmental impact.
This year’s overall Green Home of the Year award winner, the Bechtold residence by architect Mark Chalom, incorporates a wide range of sustainability features without compromising the amenities and traditional virtues of a Southwestern style home on the outskirts of Santa Fe (see “Finding the sweet spot” ). The same goes for Klaus Meyer’s Santa Fe Passive House, a modern-leaning design with an overachieving green IQ (see our Green Home department, "Steps ahead"). These homes and in fact every entrant in the competition use less energy, materials, and water, offer healthier indoor environments, and create less negative environmental impact than their conventional counterparts. They do it in style, with one eye on budget and the other on the future. For builder and homeowner alike, a new sense of legacy provokes seventh-generation thinking: how will my actions affect my great-great-times-seven grandchildren? Now it looks like we can leave them a healthy planet and a pretty sweet home to live in, too.