Today, green is one of the most overused adjectives in our vocabulary. Couple it with products and services, such as green building materials or green architecture, and it gives the nouns it modifies whole new meanings. Yet today, no term seems more muddled to us anything connected to green.
When it comes to homes, which is what we focus on at NextHaus Alliance, the word sustainable is used widely as well—though it’s not involved anywhere near the frequency of green. Google “green homes” and you get 398 million hits. A search for “sustainable homes” gets only 19.9 million results.
Yet sustainable is much more logical term. The word itself implies that something can be maintained to last a long time—which is important given that buying, building or renovating a home is probably the biggest investment most of us make. And by merit of that definition, a sustainable home is also resilient—again an important concept given the impact the forces of nature can have on our homes. In recent years, we all know too well the damage floods, storms and earthquakes can inflict on our homes.
Smart home is equally ambiguous to most of us, especially given the speed of change in this field. Experts predict that there will be 25 billion Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices by 2020, and a typical family home will contain dozens, if not hundreds, of these “smart,” network-connected products. Many of us already use many different technologies in our homes, and use phones, tablets and watches to regulate all sorts of functions.
That’s why we invite you to join the NextHaus Community, and take advantage of the knowledge and perspectives of our team and affiliated members. We all have different areas of expertise related to sustainable homes and resilient design, and hope to share our knowledge and insights with you on the pages of our Greener Gestures blog and in live events. Sign up below to stay informed.
We also encourage you to share your experiences with like-minded friends or colleagues who might also enjoy working with the Nexthaus Alliance for their next home project.