Quote of the Day: Bill McDonough on Green Renovation

dana building photo
The Samuel Trask Dana Building was renovated by William McDonough and Partners

Bill McDonough is interviewed in Newsweek Magazine. His comments on old buildings going green:

"I got a call from a college president who was saying they were going to renovate a building which he thought was very beautiful. It had high ceilings and tall windows, and they were going to put in aluminum fixed windows, drop the ceilings down to 10 feet from 15 to put in AC. It was going to cost $5 million to make the building energy-efficient. My response to him was: "Don't do it! You'll destroy the building! Go raise $1 million and put up a megawatt of wind power on a family farm in western Minnesota. Let that farmer … send his kids to college, and pay his mortgage, and you'll produce a megawatt of power, which is more than you'll need for your building." ::Newsweek

More TreeHugger on Green Renovations:
Donovan Rypkema: LEED stands for "Lunatic Environmentalists Enthusiastically Demolishing"
Victorian Houses Can Have A Green Makeover Too
Martin Liefhebber on Embodied Energy of Existing Buildings
Renovation Uses Twice As Much Labor, Half as Much Material as New Construction