Rebuilt Green: The Natural Capital Center and the Transformative Power of Building

by Bettina von Hagen, Erin Kellogg, and Eugénie Frerichs. A publication of Ecotrust, Portland, Oregon, 2003; 120 pages, softcover, $21. Contact Ecotrust at 503-227-6225 or visit www.ecotrust.org/publications/.

Rebuilt Green, and the lead character is the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center, a LEED^® Gold renovated warehouse in the emerging River District of Portland, Oregon. But to leave it at that would be to deny the larger ambitions of

Rebuilt Green. Instead of highlighting the building’s attractive front façade, the book’s unassuming cover shows a panorama of the immediate area, placing the Natural Capital Center visually and symbolically within its surrounding community. Similarly, the book takes its description beyond the physical boundaries of the building, embracing and explaining the larger context of sustainability.

Rebuilt Green is organized into nine chapters and covers a lot of ground, ranging from general information such as “The Case for Green Building” and “Working With History” to the specifics of “Energy,” “Water,” and “Materials.” Photos, drawings, and charts, along with more than 30 sidebars, lend a magazine-style readability to the book. Although

Rebuilt Green is organized in a logical manner, the lack of an index makes tracking down specific bits of information a chore.

Rebuilt Green was the collaborative effort of ten authors, and each chapter comes with a great deal of firsthand knowledge. The success of the project is celebrated on every page, but the authors are also refreshingly honest about the frustrations of the redevelopment process and its results. The chapter on energy includes a frank discussion of the design team’s quest for an appropriate HVAC system; the chapter on the construction process includes a thorough breakdown of the project’s budget; and a sidebar titled “The Perils of Communal Living” explains some problems the tenants have experienced with vandalism and the distractions that come with an open office setup. More detailed information about the building would have been welcome in some places: brand names of various green building materials would have been useful, for example, as would a report on the building’s energy performance.

Those who are familiar with green design will find little new information here, but they will find an engaging story and a reminder of how their work fits within a larger system of environmental and social responsibility. Through the example of the Natural Capital Center, the authors of

Rebuilt Green hope to convince their readers of the logic and the importance of green building, and they imagine a day when the innovative practices they describe are commonplace. “Perhaps fifteen years from now a green building filled with life, and with economy, community, and ecology completely intertwined, will be old news,” the book concludes.

– JB