A FEEL-GOOD haze surrounds the question of environmental design. The 'green building' as we know it alternates between architectural fashion and clever technology. Put simply, green design is the use of principles and strategies that reduce the environmental impact of a building throughout its lifetime.

The central premise is that we should leave the planet no worse than we found it for future generations.

The most common apprehension about greening is that it relies on expensive products or technologies. The media seems to declare as 'green' every new development with a visibly-placed photovoltaic panel, reinforcing the myth of the high-tech solution. Design magazines fuss over the vocabulary of environmental design - double-skinned walls (Changi MRT Station), operable sunshades (The Atrium@Orchard) and wind-catching walls (Menara Umno, Penang).

Rarely are these technologies evaluated in terms of real environmental impact or cost effectiveness.

Cost depends on when the decision is made to go green. Addressed early in the design process, it can cost nothing. The process of greening should reduce capital and operational expenditures.

Deferred until later in the design process, it can be a burden to the project budget as, by then, decisions have been made that affect a building's relationship to its climate.

A building with greater exposure to the sun, for instance, will require more air-conditioning. Greening at this design stage is compensatory. Any later and it will become corrective.

Green, today, is acknowledged as politically correct. Five years ago, the question of ecological responsibility in buildings here was rarely discussed, much less advocated. Coverage of green issues in the press suggests that between 1998 and last year, there was an exponential rise in public awareness. The number of times that the term 'environmental sustainability' appeared in the media jumped fivefold.

The Asean energy-efficiency award, launched in 2000, did much to enhance awareness of energy use. The award has become a hallmark of civic responsibility. These days, some developers ask that their project, once completed, be eligible for submission.

But despite the progress on some issues, there are obstacles in the making of holistically green buildings.

It is still difficult, for instance, to assess the impact that building materials have on the environment. Environmental soundness - toxicity, recycled content, manufacturing process and transportation - is impossible to quantify without the manufacturers' help. Hardly any supplier in Asia will volunteer information on this. And unless the project team demands it, they have little incentive to do so. We need to reach a point where a building and its constituent parts can be easily assessed for what they do to the environment long before they get to the building site.

With other green objectives, like occupant comfort, setting targets is hard. It is easy to project that a new building should be 20 per cent more energy-efficient than its comfort equivalent. But how does one quantify comfort?

Another obstacle is the extent to which architects and engineers collaborate in setting targets. An architect's decision to boost the availability of daylight inside the building must be matched by the project engineer's artificial lighting provisions, which must include dimmer controls and sensors that reduce reliance on electrical lights when there is sufficient natural light.

Research into how buildings are actually designed tells us that professionals within the project team do not communicate enough on these issues.

Where the design process cannot reform itself from within, external prods are needed. The Asean energy efficiency award has shown that when a developer buys into the need for improved performance, architects and engineers have little choice but to work out a way to get there. We need more awards, perhaps even an Asean-wide green label rating for buildings.

A five-star building would consume fewer non-sustainable resources, provide better conditions for its occupants and be gentle on the environment. What that does is to put power in the consumers' hands.

You could one day have a choice between no-star and five-star properties. If you decide on the latter, designers, engineers, developers, suppliers will have to realign their priorities.

With green design, whatever the raison d'etre - fiscal or ethical, energy savings or rain-forest rescue - a building with some green focus is better than one with none at all. Paradigm shifts take place only when it is their time. This one is primed and ready to go.