Greener Pastures

City slicker Laura Burns proves green design doesn’t have to be boring or bohemian

By Rowena Kelley

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Designer Laura Birns likes to open doors for people. And she likes to design them, too. This one is made of wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and inlaid with recomposited veneers and aluminum metals. It’s the kind of door she’d like to open for everyone. No formaldehyde. No acid. One hundred percent sustainable. Green.

Birns, a member of the American Society of Interior Designers and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), is leading the way to a greener landscape and a more responsible, ecoconscious design industry. It’s a mission she’s been passionately pursuing for eight years, long before green became a buzzword. “I’ve always wanted to do more than make pretty spaces,” she says. “Now I can beat upon the social consciousness with each of my designs.”

While she knows it would be easier to select traditional materials and processes, Birns takes the extra step to find sustainable flooring from renewable sources, rug companies certified free of child labor, and paints containing low or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs). She also works with various organizations to educate peers and influence policies. One of her latest involvements is with the USGBC’s task force, helping fire victims rebuild in Rancho Bernardo.

“We are the spokespeople; our projects are the showcase,” she says. “It’s our responsibility as interior designers to be on the forefront, to take risks and to make sustainable design look great so people will want it.”

Here, Birns showcases the power of green through two homes she designed in Del Mar. Two very different homeowners. Two very different palettes. Both of them green.

Island Import

In 2002, Birns was working on a remodel in Maui. When a friend of the homeowner came by, she was so busy with the installation she could barely carry on a conversation with him. Little did she then know the retired lawyer from Chicago would become her client.

“No one ever knows,” Birns says with a chuckle, when asked if her new client realized she had applied sustainable design to the Maui project. “Especially back then, when green wasn’t ‘in’ at all.”

The beauty of green home design, she says, is that it is, first and foremost, about the clients’ needs. “Green doesn’t drive the look,” she explains. “The designer drives the look using green materials. In fact, there is no ‘look’ to green—it is a means to achieving the look you desire while still being environmentally responsible.”

Back on the mainland a year and a half later, Birns began remodeling the home office of the former Chicagoan and, as she does with all her clients, opened his eyes to the possibilities of green design. It began with a desk and credenza made of kirei wood mixed with aluminum and glass—materials that are recyclable, sustainable and certified green. He fell in love with the texture and from there grew even more excited with the addition of red bibinga drawers and a natural grass wall covering applied with a water-based adhesive. To separate the office from the hallway and allow for privacy, Birns added pocket doors made of FSC-certified ash.

To achieve the “dark and dramatic” look her client wanted for the media room, she selected slate, a natural material that can be recycled. “He saw what I had done on the Maui project, where I used a slab of granite for a wall,” Birns says. “Granite wouldn’t have been the right choice here, so instead I selected oversize tiles of slate and arranged the pieces to form a very organic pattern.”

To enhance the effect, she topped the entertainment unit with black fossil stone and used sleek aluminum for the frame and legs. Cabinet doors are resin embedded with thatch. (“You actually get LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] points for the use of this resin,” Birns says.) The floor is an engineered wood from a sustainable forest in Australia.

Like her client’s art collection, the front door also had to make a statement. Birns chose FSC-certified ash for the body, then used recomposited veneers and aluminum metals for the inlay. Her client was awed by the final result.

“This client was really supportive of green design and trusted me to use these outlandish materials to create a sophisticated look,” she says. “It’s a fabulous, exciting process to see clients’ passion for green grow from one room to the next. That’s how green becomes engrained in someone’s lifestyle.”