Saratoga Glen UnaHow big can a home get before it is simply too big to be called “green”, regardless of its design and materials?  According to architect Jason McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Green Building Council and author of the Living Building Challenge, “the average American family house or condominium, which today is built for three people, should be no larger than 1,600 square feet in order to be considered “green.”  This is more than 600 square feet larger than the house of the 1950’s, but approximately 900 square feet smaller than the average house today!

Other sustainable suggestions from McLennan:

  1. “If people have more money and are looking for a new place to live, the compelling message should not be to move into a larger home, but rather to invest in quality and design and to downsize or ‘rightsize’ based on your family size.
  2. “Working at home drastically reduces green house gas emissions as transportation impacts are avoided. Additional square footage can be justified if people are working at home a significant amount of time. In these cases, I would propose a maximum 200 square feet bonus allowance to accommodate telecommuting for each working adult.”
  3. “The square-foot-per-person metric lessens as more people join a household. (Sharing is also green.) So house size shrinks from 600 square feet per person down to 450 square feet per person as an overall average.”