A growing portion of the world’s populace today appreciates the virtues of a sustainable lifestyle. We think about limited natural resources, the vitality of the oceans, clean air and water, a bright future for coming generations – all the textbook stuff – but then we go home at night to buildings which silently betray all our positive energy. Most people don’t know it, but standard construction practices in America lead to grossly inefficient buildings. They leak energy, stand by the support of virgin lumber and all the while harbor stockpiles of terrible poisons.

Fortunately, architects around the world are growing sensitive to these matters. They represent a new wave of “green builders,” environmentalists who are pushing their own industry to shift standards into a new gear. Leger-Wanaselja Architecture in Berkeley, California is just one of many green building firms. It consists of Cate Leger and Karl Wanaselja, a husband-wife team originally from New York State. They stand at the forefront of this new construction movement and have designed and built green homes since 1991. They employ methods and techniques which maximize the use of solar energy and salvaged or recycled building materials and which simultaneously minimize the use of toxins – major steps forward in an industry which thrives on the cheapest, easiest route toward a finished product. 

“It’s certainly not cheaper to build the way we do,” says Leger. “It’s not necessarily more expensive, either, but it’s not money that we’re thinking about. I really do my environmental work because I’m genuinely concerned about the environment.”

As a designer, Leger directs her energies toward preserving open spaces and over-utilized resources, but the avoidance of poisonous materials absorbs the greater portion of her efforts. 

“Toxic materials in our homes are my main concern, because ultimately these chemicals will wind up in our bodies and our environment.”

Leger cites formaldehyde, a component of the glue that makes plywood and engineered lumber sufficiently strong for construction purposes. Formaldehyde has been identified as a probable carcinogen, but Leger says it is currently an unavoidable fact of life in the designing and construction industry. 

“There is a non-toxic glue,” she says, “that’s just been developed for finished plywood and it may be strong enough to replace formaldehyde in structural wood, but it takes a lot of energy for the industry to change.”

Leger and Wanaselja also go to lengths to avoid products containing poly-bromated flame retardants and volatile organic compounds, chemicals which have been associated with birth defects and damage to the nervous system. There are many more toxins to be found in conventional building materials, and common sense dictates that numerous adjustments must take place for the sake of our own safety. However, as Leger points out, we use these dangerous materials for a good reason: They work.

“These chemicals perform really well at holding buildings together and keeping the rain out,” she explains. “People aren’t crazy. People want to do the right thing – and given the right information they’ll make a good decision. It’s not because anyone wants to poison the world.” 

Yet, even for educated designers and builders, finding alternative materials can be challenging. Industry standards operate under tremendous inertia, and Leger says that removing toxic chemicals from commerce usually requires convincing evidence of serious health or environmental threats.

“But there have been so many after-the-fact discoveries of health dangers that many people are now beginning to take the precautionary approach, trying to take a chemical out of commerce now rather than after it’s too late. Karl and I operate under the precautionary principle.” 

Leger and Wanaselja have participated in the creation of more than 20 green homes in the past decade-and-a-half, including several marvelous projects which prove beyond the doubts of skeptics that the curious visions and ideas of green builders do in fact work as well as traditional methods. In 2004, Leger and Wanaselja completed a groundbreaking building complex in Berkeley almost entirely of reused or salvaged materials. They built the walls with retired street signs and highway markers, installed car-windows as bathroom shelves, put Mazda hatchback railings along the inside stairwells, constructed a stunning parking lot gate made of Volvo doors, stuffed shredded newspapers into the walls as insulation and supported the building with beams of salvaged wood.

Currently in progress is a Leger Wanaselja designed house in the Richmond Hills overlooking San Francisco Bay, which will be constructed largely of shipping containers. These huge steel boxes spend their careers on the high seas protecting newly manufactured cars, electronics, appliances and furniture from the elements. As a net importer, the United States winds up with a great surplus of these containers, too bruised and battered for continued use on cargo ships but the perfect alternative to virgin lumber and other traditional building materials. 

Leger and Wanaselja are continually boosting their standards and pushing forward with new ideas and techniques, and one of their most ambitious projects is set to begin in August. It will be a home of their own, built via unconventional means and materials and virtually free of toxins. 

“We’re planning on doing a mud floor,” says Leger. “Concrete is a very energy intensive material, but mud is local and abundant. There’s some great clay around Berkeley that we’ll be using.”

Poplar tree bark will be used to cover the walls, other wood will be salvaged and the house will be almost entirely heated by the sun and powered without the use of gas. Leger and Wanaselja will also rely heavily upon that greatest untapped resource of all – automotive junkyards – for suitable pieces of metal and shatterproof glass. 

“There are just so many old cars out there, still useable. When a car dies it’s the inside that dies – the skin is designed to be very durable and is usually still intact.”

A large number of architects and contractors currently continue with old habits, says Leger, yet the United States has progressed in recent years. She recalls her experience working construction on an apartment complex with Habitat for Humanity in 1991 in Washington D.C. The project awoke her to the appalling nature of conventional building.

“I was floored by what we were putting into these homes. The air was so thick with chemicals from the paint and glues, and I just couldn’t believe this was considered standard.”

 But that was 15 years ago. Poisons still remain in the architecture of America, but the standards of industry commerce are slowly but surely changing.

"As a society I really think that we’re going through a major learning process, but there’s a lot of inertia in the industry standards. It’s like turning a big ship, but I have a lot of optimism for the future of green building in the U.S. In the 10 or 12 years that I’ve been really involved, enormous changes have taken place. It’s been so rapid. When I first started, no one even thought about toxins entering the environment. Now it’s so commonplace to make those connections, and there are so many businesses now that are taking a stand and developing safe materials or supplying sustainably certified materials. The movement has taken off like wildfire, but there’s still a long way to go.”

For more information on Leger Wanaselja Architecture, visit the Web at www.greendwellings.com.