Doi:10.5552/drind.2013.1205 ABSTRACT • Global sustainability goals have led to the development of the green building movement. The Green Building Program, stemming from the movement, has had unprecedented success as it provides a quantifi able metric to people’s efforts towards sustainable development. Sustainable development and green buildings are often used interchangeably. Although, sustainable development and green buildings are related, they are not the same. This paper provides an overview of how green building relates to sustainable development practices. Sustainabil-ity also governs decisions concerning building materials. A comprehensive explanation of what constitutes a green building material is discussed and how renewable material like wood fare in the deciding criteria. There are many green building rating systems in place. United States Green Building Council administered Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) is the global market leader in the rating systems. LEED is a commendable and grand effort in moving towards sustainable development by converting the built environment green. However, it does have certain pitfalls and challenges. Some of these challenges are with respect to policies on material se-lection and performance monitoring. The materials used in a project are considered at a common starting point and no consideration is given to the life cycle performance of the material. Statements concerning sustainability require validation, and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a tool that can provide such validity. This paper presents how benefi cial it can be, when included, in the bigger scheme of green building rating systems and introduces an inte-grated design concept for green buildings

Stress is a major public health concern and work stress is a contributor to both acute and chronic stress. Moreover, most people spend the majority of their time indoors. It follows that the design of office spaces and other interior environments should consider the health impacts of individuals in terms of psychophysiological responses to stress. In this way, buildings can act as an environmental intervention to compliment social and therapeutic interventions to stress. In this study, human stress responses were compared in experimental office settings with and without wood. The hypothesis was that the office setting with wood furniture would reduce stress responses and improve stress recovery as indicated by salivary cortisol concentration. The within-subjects experiment revealed that overall stress levels were lower in the office-like environment with oak wood than the control room, but there was no detectable difference in stress levels between the office-like environment with walnut wood and the control room. Stress recovery was not found to differ between either environment, possibly because duration of the experiment was too short or that not enough samples were taken during the recovery period.