We all know someone who is down to earth. Practical, intelligent, humble, caring and grounded in the fundamentals of life. To be called "down to earth" is, by most standards, a compliment and a personality type that this earth could probably use more of.

But for a moment, let's put personality aside and consider a literal meaning of the words down to earth. Then we might be describing someone whose lifestyle, work and passion are devoted to the respect and preservation of the earth. So, can a person be down to earth and down to earth? Well, if Bill Browning is the person in question, then the answer is yes.

William D. Browning grew up with a passion for the environment. In fact, neither he nor his parents can recall a time when he didn't have this passion. As a seven-year-old boy, Browning purchased the then popular book, Born Free, about a lioness cared for by humans and then released into the wild. "I couldn't even read all the words, but I had to have that book," Browning remembers now with a chuckle.

Today, Browning's innate passion is brought to bear on countless projects-buildings, community developments, books, speaking engagements, committees and boards of directors. Officially though, he wears three hats: founder and director of Rocky Mountain Institute's Green Development Services (GDS); partner of Anaskenoan, LLC, a Virginia-based development company; and advisor to Interface, a carpet, textile and raised flooring manufacturer. He lives in Snowmass, CO, near the headquarters of Rocky Mountain Institute.

In all the work Browning does, he consistently seeks the answer to one question: What environmental opportunities are available to make this a better building, home, city? Historically, development has necessarily meant destroying the environment. But now, with technology and the commitment of people like Browning, development can be creative, not destructive. And the best part, says Browning, is something intangible.

"If we get it right, a building can have a soul. It can be a magical building that transcends what we normally think of a building being. And the way people feel in these kinds of buildings is just as magical."

Browning recalls magical childhood experiences that today influence the way he thinks about buildings and community. The son of a U.S. Air Force pilot, he spent his childhood in Tennessee, Japan, Germany, Nebraska and Virginia. In one particular medieval-type village in Germany, Browning could head in one direction if he wanted the town's excitement and the other direction if wanted the forest's serenity.

"I could get into all kinds of trouble, but I was never in any real danger," he says. "There was a great sense of community that was fostered by the people and the places where they lived and worked."

This sense of community is what Browning, his partners at Anaskenoan and developer John Clark, the John A. Clark Co., Washington, DC, are hoping to recreate at Haymount, a 1,650-acre neo traditional town under development in Caroline County, VA. Located some 50 miles south of Washington, DC, Haymount will be a mixed-use and mixed-income community with a projected population of 9,500.

According to Browning, Haymount will have approximately 4,000 homes ranging in price from $58,000 to $500,000. There will be some 250,000 square feet of retail space, 500,000 square feet of office and light industrial space, 14 churches, two schools, a 50-acre college campus, a hotel and a museum, parks and gardens. The final stages of financing should be completed in October, construction will then begin in November and the first townspeople should be moving into their new homes next spring.

The beauty of Haymount, according to Browning, is the way in which people will be able to connect with each other, with nature and with the history of the site. Walking will be the preferred mode of transportation, with an easy connection to mass transit when necessary. More than two-thirds of the Haymount site is to be preserved in its natural state or maintained as productive organic farmland. Included in the plan are a biological wastewater treatment system and biotechnical storm water management system. And thousands of historic and pre-historic artifacts will be housed in the museum.

Architects and planners, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, proponents and practitioners of New Urbanism, did the land plan and architectural code for Haymount. Browning recalls first seeing Duany's work in 1983.

"It really struck a chord with me," says Browning. "I was reminded of how easily I could get around that town in Germany and that feeling of security mingled with freedom. Here it was all over again. If we can do that at Haymount, we will have achieved a major goal."

Another goal, of course, is preserving the environment. But Browning would like to see more than preservation of what is already there. He advocates not only restoring the environment, but recreating natural systems that can take care of a community's infrastructural needs. For example, why not rebuild wetlands as a drainage system rather than build concrete storm drains?

"Look at Village Homes in Davis, CA," Browning says. "Developer Michael Corbett saved $800 per lot-and there are 240 units-by using natural swales for storm water infiltration instead of expensive storm sewers. With the money saved, Corbett was able to put in public parks, walkways and gardens. And the natural drainage system at Village Homes has proven more efficient than the rest of Davis' storm sewer system."

Browning and his colleagues at GDS are considering similar types of natural systems for the soon to be developed Olympic Village in Sydney, Australia. The site is an abandoned munitions depot about nine miles west of downtown Sydney. Surrounded by residential and industrial uses, the site is "a hole in the fabric of Sydney," says Browning.

Beneath the site is an underground creek. Plans call for restoring a river out of this creek and replanting natural Eucalyptus savanas. The athletes' living quarters, constructed with sustainable materials and energy-saving systems, will be laid out as three neighborhoods using the tenets of New Urbanism. After the Olympic games, the homes will be sold in phases.

"The local utility is going to use this site for an interesting experiment," says Browning. "Each home will have photovoltaic (solar electric) panels built into the roof. They will be owned by the utility. So the utility grid is going to change from a few generators here and there to consumers and producers all over the map. The question is what will happen when each house essentially becomes a power plant? What will happen to electricity use and costs? I have a pretty good idea, but we'll have to wait and see."

Connected to the restoration of natural systems is the restoration of human involvement in various ecosystems. People erroneously believe, says Browning, that they have no business in an ecosystem. To the contrary, ecosystems right here in North America depend on human intervention. For example, the tall grass prairies around Chicago, IL, came about from annual burning by the native peoples who lived there. This information was found in diaries of explorers who witnessed the burnings and from restoration ecologists who went to the trouble of learning native languages in order to speak with elders.

"The word in Algonquin is 'mishcoda,'' says Browning, "which means 'burnt over bare place.' And we are finding more and more places where human interaction is important. In Borneo, anthropologists discovered that what they thought was the forest primeval was actually a huge garden thanks to the people there who have been planting seeds for years."

As with the natural environment, and perhaps even more so, human involvement-indeed, direction-is critical in the built environment. In the book, Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), Browning and colleagues at Rocky Mountain Institute examine 80 case studies from conception to occupancy. Projects range from hotels and office buildings to greenhouses and multi-unit housing developments. With each case examined the team asked itself this question: how is this real estate development different from conventional developments?

One answer that came up time and again was whole-systems thinking. As defined in Green Development, whole-systems thinking is "a process through which the interconnections between systems are actively considered and solutions are sought that address multiple problems at the same time." According to Browning, this kind of thinking usually requires approaching the design process differently.

"Design is usually a relay race," he claims. "The architect designs the building and then hands the drawings over to an interior designer and says, 'Here, furnish this.' So the interior designer selects the furnishings and then turns to the mechanical engineer and says, 'Here, cool this.' Somewhere along the race track, the baton is dropped and everyone falls back on old rules of thumb that never made any real sense."

Thus, in almost all of the case studies examined, the design process began with a gathering of everyone involved-architects, designers, engineers, landscape architects, environmental groups, citizen's groups, town council members, local government officials and planners. This integrated design process allows a team to work together from the outset in order to get the job done right. And Browning firmly believes that by looking at how the pieces of a project interact, the estimated cost of a project cannot only be maintained, but possibly even lowered.

"I may choose some more expensive, high-performance windows for a project," he explains. "But then I also might be able to downsize the mechanical systems because the windows provide better quality daylight and reduce heat loss and heat gain. So the end cost drops."

But this kind of designing doesn't only benefit the bottom line, as proven in another Rocky Mountain Institute publication, Greening the Building and the Bottom Line: Increasing Productivity Through Energy-efficient Design. Written by Browning and Joseph J. Romm of the U.S. Department of Energy, this paper documents eight projects in which improved lighting, heating and cooling increased worker productivity. One notable quote from the paper: "An increase of one percent in productivity can provide savings to a company that exceed its entire energy bill."

"I'd like to say that we consciously decided to find out if these kinds of improvements would affect productivity, but the truth is we just fell into this research," Browning admits. "We kept coming across examples of renovations where lighting, the mechanical systems, the envelope design and so forth were improved, and then these companies experienced dramatic gains in worker productivity. And the gains weren't temporary, but were persistent with the building. The obvious conclusion was that good, energy-efficient design can increase worker productivity."

Browning adds that the publication generated 500 newspaper and magazine articles at the time it was first published. This was partly because the conclusions were astounding and partly because they flew right in the face of what business schools had been teaching for some 60 years, namely that buildings are irrelevant and only management matters.

Rocky Mountain Institute's GDS continues to collect case studies and hopes to apply findings to future projects. Browning particularly looks forward to renovating inner city schools someday. "Then we'll watch and see what happens to the kids in those schools."

After graduating from his childhood classrooms around the world, Browning received a bachelor of environmental design from the University of Colorado, specializing in energy-conscious architecture and resource management. He then earned a master's of science in real estate development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the MIT Center for Real Estate's 1991 Public-Sector Fellowship. That same year, he founded Rocky Mountain Institute's GDS to assist architects, developers and other real estate professionals in integrating energy-efficient and environmentally responsive design into specific projects. Some of GDS's consulting projects include new towns, resorts, building renovations, a bug zoo, Wal-Mart's Eco-Mart, the Grand Canyon National Park and the Pentagon Renovation.

Browning has given numerous lectures and workshops for such organizations as the AIA, the Urban Land Institute, MIT and Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He has served on the boards of directors of the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, the U.S. Green Building Council and Greening America.

With all the hats he wears, there is one question which pervades Browning's thinking: Why are we building so many new buildings when we have usable existing facilities all across the country? Rather than watch urban sprawl creep any further than it has, let's fix abandoned sites in our cities. Not only does this sprawl necessitate the use of an automobile, but it also contributes to the disenfranchisement of the elderly and the very young. Browning would prefer to see developers use existing sites to breathe new life into communities, create economic linkages and recreate natural habitats.

One of Browning's favorite examples of an existing site fixed for new use is the Inn of the Anasazi located in Santa Fe, NM's historic Plaza District. The building formerly housed state penitentiary offices and a juvenile detention center. Now, it is a four-star hotel filled with imaginative elements of green design. Moreover, the Inn of the Anasazi is one of those magical buildings.

"Yes, the Inn of the Anasazi is an outstanding example of green design," says Browning. "But it's the incredible feeling you get when you're inside that makes this place even more special. This building practically has a soul; you can feel it on an emotional level. So we have to ask ourselves how can we build more buildings with souls that are restorative to the human soul? What if we did entire neighborhoods that way? It'll be a fun challenge."

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