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Source section: Section 2 - Sustainable Thinking PDF page: 38 Guide page: 31 OCR quality: high (277 words)
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Practitioners of an integrative process must develop new skills that might not have been required in their
past professional work: critical thinking and questioning, collaboration, teamwork and communication, and
a deep understanding of natural processes. An integrative process is a different way of thinking and working,
and it creates a team from professionals who have traditionally worked as separate entities.
The integrative process requires more time and collaboration during the early conceptual and design phases
than conventional practices. Time must be spent building the team, setting goals, and doing analysis before
any decisions are made or implemented. This upfront investment of time, however, reduces the time it
takes to produce construction documents. Because the goals have been thoroughly explored and woven
throughout the process, projects can be executed more thoughtfully, take advantage of building system
synergies, and better meet the needs of their occupants or communities, and ultimately save money, too.
The specific steps involved in the integrative process will be addressed in Section 3.
Nature has much to teach us about applying systems thinking, a life-cycle approach, and integrative
processes to our work. By observing natural patterns, such as how heat flows, water moves, or trees grow, we
can learn to design systems that use resources effectively. The fields of biomimicry and permaculture provide
two different and innovative approaches to solving problems by following nature’s patterns and strategies.
Both of these fields of practice ask: how would nature solve this? Similarly, green building practitioners can
use the core concepts addressed in this section to determine the nature of the systems in which they are
working, meet the needs of the community, and set goals and priorities for the project. N
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