mind, and others that are essential to positive ecological relationships. Questions of spatial design are absolutely central to green alternatives, and they will be touched in at various points in this thesis. But I also want to put some focus on product and economic system design to create a larger synthesis which both clarifies the situation of the building industry today and some fruitful priorities for making positive change. This dissertation is, however, not simply about building materials. I am perhaps equally interested in what the building industry can tell us about a potential green economy, as in what green economic analysis can tell us about building and building materials. So this look at building materials serves as a kind of case study of postindustrial economic development. Until recently the focus of the green building movement has been much more on energy than on materials. The same can also be said for the environmental movement generally. Energy is a justifiable concern, but a narrow energy focus sometimes runs the risk of preoccupation with efficiencyavoiding consideration of the purpose of what we are doing economically. Materials are energy, but embodied energyenergy bound up with and expressive of human purpose. They are more transparently reflective of the end-uses of the economyand end-use is a crucial starting point for ecological design. The building industry, especially that related to materials, is expressive of important trends in green economic development. The role of information and knowledge, the appropriate forms of production and recycling, and even emerging forms of civil-society-based regulation are graphically manifest in building, and often substantially more advanced than in other sectors of the economy. Most generally and importantly, questions of design are keys to postindustrial economic transformation, and