NEW ORLEANS, LA - Environmentallly friendly building, long the province of nonprofits and crusading celebrities, is moving into the dollar-and-cents world of commercial building. In the past month, two New Orleans builders have put on the market houses that feature emission-free materials and energy-efficient designs without the high prices traditionally part of the green package. The homes, which sell for between $120 and $216 per square foot, signal the movement made trendy by Brad Pitt and his Make It Right Lower Ninth Ward homebuilding project has caught on even among builders who don't have $10 million of star power behind them.
William Monaghan, architect of the $120-per-square-foot Derbigny model home, built the house at 5713 Elysian Fields Ave. as a response to a design question he pored over in the months after Katrina: Can a high-quality, eco-conscious house be built in the post-storm economy for less than $134,000, the average pre-Katrina price of a house in the city? "Few builders were offering build quality, environmentally-conscious homes for this price so I decided to try," said Monaghan, a New Orleans native who resides in New York.
Monaghan's designs mix traditional New Orleans architecture with basic green features such as energy-efficient wall construction, heavy-duty roof insulation and large windows to reduce reliance on electric lights. Another eco-addition is a cantilevered wood piling foundation 2 feet higher than the mandated site elevation. While Derbigny wasn't made with recycled materials and lacks the extensive eco-technology seen in costlier custom-built dwellings, the $110,400, 920-square-foot house is a model of "traditional New Orleans efficiency" for the age of global warming, Monaghan said. "The traditional architecture here is the best guide to affordable, sustainable design. You don't see much going to waste in a shotgun," he said.
Green Coast Enterprises has opened the doors of the Arabella, a four-unit green condominium overlooking the Fair Grounds. The four 1,344-square-foot units are within two side-by-side, two-story buildings. The price per unit starts at $290,000 or $216 a square foot. The condos were constructed according to the Greater New Orleans National Home Builders of America's Crescent City Green building guidelines, a standardized scale that rates houses according to how many points they earn for green elements such as non-toxic paints, recycled materials, energy efficient insulation, low-water plumbing and even where the house sits in relation to the sun and the wind.
The house, which was featured on a tour of green houses Sunday during the NHBA's Green Homes Conference, is expected to earn the highest rating of "gold" on the NHBA scale when its certification is complete. In going for that gold rating, Green Coast designed the twin structures to be ultra-efficient and used low-impact or recycled-content materials, including recycled glass and plastic moldings, and bamboo floors. Building with green materials added a 2 percent to 5 percent increase to the cost of construction, said Green Coast founder Will Bradshaw. The added cost and extra steps in designing and constructing with unconventional materials and methods has traditionally kept builders from jumping on the green train, Bradshaw said.
But as growing consumer demand encourages more builders to seek environmentally friendly products, the difference in cost will shrink, he said. "It's already happening (that materials are becoming easier to find at lower prices)," Bradshaw said, "and as more people catch on, these materials are going to be easier to find and people will begin charging less."
Source: New Orleans City Business