A Cliff Notes Version of the History of Green Building

Some practices, such as using local and renewable materials or passive solar design, date back millennia - the Anasazi indian tribe in the Southwest built entire villages so that all the homes received solar heat in the winter. There are few things as amazing as walking through some of the preserved homes!!!

The contemporary green building movement arose out of the need and desire for more energy efficient and environmentally friendly building practices. The oil price increases of the 1970s spurred significant research and activity to improve energy efficiency and find renewable energy sources. This, combined with the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, led to the earliest experiments with contemporary green building.