While I found this presentation interesting starting with research buildings and moving to more convetional designs, I must point out that the energy consumption per square foot in many green buildings seems to get less value than the green materials and the environment that the building creates. Typically, the use of clear glass creates severe overheating problems requiring cooling and in some cases heat from flourescent lighting can require air conditioning year round in a tall tower office building.

I hope that the new buildings are provisioning themselves for the future buy including elements like structural mounting points for roof mounted solar collectors thus eliminating the need to cut holes in the roofing, daylighting lighting tubes or fiber optics can bring in natural light, and heat recovery/ fresh air makeup can also be preheated reducing winter energy use.

I agree, the office building with the central atrium really confused me as to how it was "green". In my city we have such an office building built around a central atrium and its electricty bill is 20% more per usable foot than the other office buildings. All those buildings in the slide show(besides the office buildings)seem to have very large volume to floor space ratios, and in the South or West would be anything but green in the summer time.