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It is abundantly clear after spending only a few minutes with Peter Caradonna that he really cares about the environment. His concerns about the state of the environment and the direction in which it is headed find their way into his casual conversations, his professional work and his personal life.
Caradonna, an architect based in Setauket, is on the forefront of a newly organized school of thought in architecture to design buildings that will impact the environment in a more positive way than a conventional building does. "We must leave the land for future generations to have the same or better standard of living," Caradonna said. "You cannot leave a dead planet to your children. Our success has to happen. It has to happen."
Since the mid-1990s, Caradonna has studied and designed buildings following the guidelines of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), a Washington, D.C. trade group that, in its own words, "is the nation's foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentall responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work."
The USGBC developed a style of design called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), which, according to the LEED website, "evaluates environmental performance from a 'whole building' perspective over a building's life cycle, providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a 'green building.'"
The LEED system lists 69 points of design for architects to follow in designing a building that will lead to a better use of the environment. In order for a building to be certified, it needs to comply with a certain number of these design points. The exact number varies with the level of certification a building is seeking. Caradonna, the only LEED accredited professional in Suffolk County, explained that LEED was designed by people who were "looking for ways to build better buildings."
Caradonna said that buildings are generally designed with inefficient energy systems, inflexible designs, and poor dismantling prospects. "LEED is the integration of building design," Caradonna said. "[First] you've got to find out how everything works."
In order to do this, Caradonna explained, an architect designing a building that is seeking LEED certification needs to talk to everyone who will use the building, down to the custodian who will clean it. Caradonna said that for many years, commercial buildings were designed with windows that would not open. As a result, the fumes from the cleaning agents used by the building's custodians never dissipated, and everyone who worked in the building would become ill.
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Caradonna first became interested in LEED when he worked at an architecture firm in Manhattan that was working on the Kensington Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Although the project never came to fruition, Caradonna's client asked him to explore the possible uses of green building in the design. Eventually, he became so interested in the subject that he left Manhnattan to start his own architectural firm in Stony Brook when he found that he could not do enough green-building based design for New York City clients. Caradonna said that LEED suggests simple and often inexpensive methods to increase energy efficiency. One such technique involves using a lighter shade of paint on a ceiling, which increases the reflection of the natural sunlight in the room, thereby reducing the number of lights needed in a room.
Caradonna said that because many buildings have a short life span, better recycling methods need to be developed so building materials can be re-used. He said that too often, materials are recycled not into newer versions of the same product, but instead scrap pieces. Caradonna admitted that some LEED-based designs initially could cosst more, but the savings in operations and maintenance costs over the course of the building's life would offset any higher start-up costs.
"We need long-term thinking," he said. "I am not advocating that we spend more for less. That's just not American. What I see what we really need to do is... [make] a fundamental change in design." As an example, Caradonna cited a building that was built with triple pane windows. While the cost of these windows is more than standard windows, Caradonna said that energy modeling showed that the owener would save over $18,000 in heating costs. "We're going to figure out ways for it to cost you less money," he said.
Some of the leading proponents of the LEED system are governments because of the savings that the program can offer to taxpayers. Caradonna said that on the federal level alone, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Interior and the General Services Administration, which is the government's landlord have all signed onto LEED, pledging to use it as a guideline in building design. Caradonna said that local municipalities have also shown an interest in LEED. "This way the community does not have to continually think about [bulding] bonds," he said.
Caradonna, who received his architectural training from New York Tech, is married to Ana Topolovec, who is an architect with Stony Brook University. They have two sons, Aleksander, seven, and Laurence, six.
Caradonna opened his firm, which employs two-and-a-half other architects, in 1996 and has run it out of his Route 25A office in East Setauket since early 2000. "Unlike other jobs, [with architecture], I feel like I am in a position where I can actuate change... on an issue I care about - the environment."
For more information on the USGBC or LEED, log onto www.usgbc.org, or call Caradonna's firm at 689-1120.
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