Whole Buildings — The whole buildings concept rep-resents a method of siting, design, equipment and material selection, financing, construction, and long-term operation that takes into account the systems nature of buildings and user requirements. It treats the overall building as an integrated system of interacting components. Thus it is more performance-based than prescriptive.

The concept has also been expanded to include the selection, use, and transformation of resources and materials in the manufacturing and building process, and has been extended to the concerns of building occupancy, maintenance, remodeling, and reuse. The impact of materials choices on resource availability, the environmental impact of construction, and the potential for reuse of building materials after demolition takes these concerns even further.

Passive Solar Design — Passive solar design results in a “low-energy” or “climate-responsive building,” one that gains and distributes its energy from the sun either as heat or as light or both, without resorting to mechanical means for collection and distribution. In other words, a passive solar building in and of itself serves the three functions of collecting, storing, and distributing solar energy. It is also a structure that stays naturally cooled through proper shading, natural ventilation, and a choice of building materials that stores heat in the winter and allows for its dissipation in the summer. Using passive design, however, does not mean rejecting traditional mechanical heating and cooling or lighting methods. It simply means the building uses what is naturally available first — and at little to no operating cost.