Which focus for building assessment methods: environmental performance or sustainability?

This paper is a personal response to the Green Building Challenge '98 conference, held in Vancouver in September 1998. It represents an attempt to link together conceptually - and then comment on critically - the two main challenges thrown down at the conference. These were offered at the start and end by Rees and Kohler and were, respectively: (1) that developed countries reduce the environmental impact of their built environment tenfold by 2040 (Rees, 1999: p. 216), and (2) that they stop constructing additional new buildings, limiting themselves instead to improving their existing stock (Kohler, 1999: p. 317). Although not mentioned by Rees or Kohler, both of these challenges could be tackled, for example, through adopting a Service Economy approach to improving the built environment in industrialized countries. This could allow room - in terms of both resources input and pollution output - for the rapid urbanization predicted (and already occurring) in developing countries over the next 30 or 40 years. This paper seeks to locate their challenges in the context of broader initiatives to 'dematerialize' industrial economies. This is done in order to question whether the development of methods for assessing building performance should continue to address the relatively narrow resource-efficiency agenda that has predominated over the past ten years or whether it should now be extended to begin to tackle a wider remit - the sustainability of the built environment.