The Green House as Classroom

When the actors Alysia Reiner and David Alan Basche embarked on a renovation of their four-story, 5,000-square-foot row house in Harlem two years ago, they did not intend for it to become a show house. But a chance meeting with Michela O’Connor Abrams, the president and publisher of Dwell Magazine, led to a Web chronicle of the job on dwell.com, and turned the renovation into a marketing vehicle for manufacturers of environmentally conscious products and a chance for the couple to evangelize on green building.

In Web videos seen by some 268,000 viewers, according to Dwell, Mr. Basche, who played Todd Beamer in the film “United 93,” installs radiant floor heating to save money, as Ms. Reiner recaps how she picked through metal, wood and Sheetrock refuse from the demolition — which Mr. Basche did himself — to recycle it. During an open house sponsored by Dwell last May, 700 people toured the home, learning about its native plant garden and walls coated in plaster made from recycled marble dust and pulverized seashells.

“The building of our home became an opportunity to teach,” said Ms. Reiner. “When you build a house, you learn so much that you never get to use again.”

In letting their home function as both a laboratory and a marketing device, Ms. Reiner and Mr. Basche, it turns out, are not unique. Green show houses, sponsored by magazines, nonprofit groups and developers, are appearing across the country, spreading a message about environmentally conscious building to designers, builders and home buyers, and helping to sell building products.

Environmentalism may turn out to be the biggest thing to hit the construction industry since aluminum siding (which happens to be recyclable). By 2012, green building could be a $20 billion business, up from blossom from a roughly $2 billion, according to a National Association of Home Builders’/McGraw Hill market forecast. But some builders are unfamiliar with the new materials and how to use them. And buyers may not know enough about them to request them.

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