Cornell University
Collaborative Green Building Practice
Incentive Grant Winner 2008
Beginning fall 2009, Cornell University will offer a new and unique course on sustainable practices. Preliminary research on course design identified a profound barrier to the business as usual approach to design education: fragmented curriculum development and delivery. While green building practice encourages an integrated design approach, sustainable architecture curriculum was not following suit. The Collaborative Green Building Practice course moves students beyond technological design solutions, to develop a broader understanding of green building practice. The curriculum will explore topics ranging from local and national policy, market and financial forces, to green building professions and voluntary evaluation systems.
The Collaborative Green Building Practice Course stands out for looking at both knowledge needs and the knowledge process. In addition to traditional lectures and guest speakers, an interactive web-based curriculum facilitates interdisciplinary communication among students, professionals and community members. Professor Ying Hua hopes this feature will beget collaborative solutions when confronted with a challenge that cannot be solved by a single profession. With the assistance of a hired film producer, students will create a short documentary for their final project, communicating how to overcome barriers and initiate changes to sustainable practice problems globally, nationally and locally.
Careful design of education and student learning assessment tools are key to the design of innovative curriculum.
Website: Human Ecology Program.
Duke University
The Duke Smart Home Program
Recognition Award Winner 2009
The Duke Smart Home Program encourages students from different academic disciplines to form teams and explore smart technology that promotes sustainable lifestyles. The centerpiece of this program is the Home Depot Smart Home, a unique 10-person student residence hall for green living and learning. Completed in December 2007, the Smart Home achieved the LEED Platinum certification. The Home Depot Smart Home is the world's first LEED Platinum live-in laboratory.
The Duke Smart Home Program promotes teamwork, innovation, diversity, and education in order to establish a more sustainable lifestyle that reduces energy and harmful effects on the environment. More than 100 students are involved in the program. Students can participate in the program in a variety of ways: independent study for credit, house courses on sustainability topics, senior capstone design projects, or as members of the Smart Home student club. Student teams are encouraged to prototype their ideas and compete in various green competitions each year.
The Smart Home concept was a student idea and senior project in 2003. Students were involved in the design, fundraising, and construction processes. The program continues to be a predominantly student led venture.
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Website:Duke Smart Home
Grand Valley State University
Beyond Curriculum: Cross-Campus Sustainability
Recognition Award Winner 2008
In line with the institution’s overall commitment, Grand Valley State University’s (GVSU) Sustainability Initiative provides students with the necessary attitudes, knowledge, and skills to become better steward and global citizens in the workplace and in their communities. GVSU’s comprehensive sustainability strategy integrates curriculum development with campus operations, including a commitment to LEED® construction, student-driven initiatives, and community engagement. In the classroom, more than sixty courses address the triple bottom line of sustainability as a focal point. Courses represent diverse disciplines such as humanities, social and natural sciences. Additionally, co-curricular activities such as Campus Sustainability Week and the Student Environmental Coalition have promoted resource conservation, helped create a student sustainability guide, and campus carbon footprint assessment.
Learning Objectives:
- Promote sustainability education and practices across campus
- Establish a broadly interdisciplinary approach to sustainability education
- Utilize sustainable campus facilities and routine campus operations as a resource for research and hands-on educational application
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Website: GVSU's
Sustainability Initiative.
Iowa State University
The Bridge Studio
Recognition Award Winner 2009
Since 2007, students in the College of Design at Iowa State University have engaged in issues of design practice by bringing sustainable design strategies to affordable housing and neighborhood design projects. They interact with design professionals, non-profit organizations, neighborhood associations, and contractors in confronting issues of sustainability in terms of environment, equity, and economics by through single-family housing prototypes.
The Bridge Studio works in various parts the state, including Des Moines, where in spring 2008, a project was constructed in the King Irving neighborhood. Other projects include worked in Cedar Rapids, Iowa as part of relief efforts following the 2008 floods. In fall of 2009, the Bridge Studio started work on a project in Corning, Iowa that engages issues of sustainable rehabilitation and rural communities. All projects ask students to balance tight budgets, environmental benefits, and cultural concerns and desires. By doing this, students walk away with an understanding sustainable design practice as a multi-dimensional system of thought and action that reduces carbon emissions and energy bills, stabilizes neighborhoods, and brings beauty into lives and communities.
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Website:The Bridge Studio
Iowa State University
SCI-TECH: A Technology Sequence for Generation Green
Honorable Mention 2009
Website: Iowa State
Kansas State University
Landscape Architecture Students Help the Post-Disaster Community of Greensburg, KS
Honorable Mention 2009
Website: Kansas State University
Parsons the New School for Design, School of Constructed Environments (SCE), NY
Equidistant Projection Exercise Sequence
Honorable Mention 2009
Website: School of Constructed Environments (SCE)
Philadelphia University
Master of Science in Sustainable Design Program
Recognition Award Winner 2009
The Master of Science in Sustainable Design Program (MSSD) at Philadelphia University is a post professional program serving disciplines such as architecture, design, construction, and engineering. Beginning in 2007, the program offers part time and full time pathways to completion and witnessed its first graduating class in August of 2009. There are six core tenants of the program: 1) Trans-disciplinary learning; 2) Integrated design education using an “open source” sustainable design charrette process as pedagogy; 3) Design/Quantify/Build Methodology to recognize the need for a balance between aesthetics and performance; 4) Activism and Leadership by preparing graduates to be change agents and leaders; 5) Enterprise and Entrepreneurship by connecting all activities and projects to the triple bottom line; and 6) Equity and Diversity.
This 33 credit program primarily focuses on the built environment and begins with lecture courses in sustainability, followed by a breadth of labs in green materials/design build and studios in sustainable design, ending with a 12 credit thesis in sustainable design sequence. Students completing a thesis use their projects to investigate a subject of their choosing, guided by faculty and local professionals, to explore new career directions, or launch their own sustainable businesses.
Website: Philadelphia University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Center for Architecture Science and Ecology’s (CASE) Built Ecologies (BE) Program
Recognition Award Winner 2009
The Built Ecologies program is aimed at producing a context for advanced study and research between architecture and appropriate areas of science and engineering — and with the new technologies and methodologies that these disciplines are creating. The objective of the Built Ecologies concentration is to advance knowledge in the area and applications of integrated technologies that enable a more ecologically based and progressive design of the built environment, increase its performance, and enhance quality of life.
Building on common knowledge set and summer readings, a four-course core provides the interdisciplinary mix of students with two knowledge-based seminars complemented by two research/ methods seminars. The research/methods seminars combine Built Ecologies students with those from Acoustics, and Lighting. The remaining seminars are specific to the program and support a more advanced understanding of energy, the environment, scientific principles, available / emerging technologies and materials and methods. Together these constitute roughly 30% of the curriculum. A common core knowledge-base will establish the foundation for informed interdisciplinary research and investigation in divergent and complimentary studies, design and research. A substantial part of the curriculum consists of concentration electives that customize a program to meet the specific field of inquiry desired by the student. To that end, the curriculum complements seminar based learning with interdisciplinary design/research experiences as well as individual project / thesis investigations.
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Website: CASE
University of Arkansas
Community Design Center: Building Recombinant Ecologies
Recognition Award Winner 2009
The mission of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC) is to advance creative development in Arkansas through education, research, and design solutions that enhance the physical environment. As an outreach center of the School of Architecture, UACDC is developing a repertoire of place-building models applicable to community infrastructure development concerns in Arkansas, with currency at the national level.
Emphasizing the city as ecology, these eight place-building models develop sustainable patterns in: 1) Watershed urbanism, 2) Context-sensitive highway design, 3) Green and shared streets, 4) Transit-oriented development, 5) Big box urbanism, 6) urban forestry, 7) Low impact residential development, and 8) Smart growth town planning. By solving for biological and urban patterns simultaneously, UACDC’s applied design scholarship explores how community infrastructure can deliver new combinations of ecological and urban services.
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Website: Community Design Center
University of Maine-Farmington
Sustainable Architecture that Teaches
Incentive Grant Winner 2008
The University of Maine-Farmington’s Education and Health Rehabilitation Center is certified LEED Silver. But, how green can a green building be? This particular building was born a darker shade of green, conceptualized from design to occupancy as an ecological teaching tool. Every day, faculty members and student leaders coordinate guided tours and educational programming for K-12 and university students, staff and community members to interact with the built environment.
Institutionalizing their commitment to sustainability, faculty members embed the use of green buildings as a pedagogical tool within their individual curricula, allowing the twenty-three student leaders to receive credit towards their Education degrees. With students often exceeding expectations, let's just say, the idea has worked. Students leaders created the Green Building Tour protocol, tour kit and a historical timeline of the building's development.
The educational experience involves hands-on learning activities with building material samples, allowing visitors become familiar with sustainable products, and what makes a building green. Take-away lesson plans and age specific brochures are also provided in order for visitors to carry learning back to their own schools. Finally, feeling fortunate that university officials overcame the perception of financial obstacles to pursuing certification, students decided to gather historical records from building donors on, “why they felt it important” to contribute to this green building project. The final product is a historical timeline of the building’s development and dedication to going green.
From healthy green buildings to innovative green curriculum, the
University of Maine-Farmington is an example of a truly green campus.
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Website: UMF Education Center.
University of Texas Austin
The Alley-Flat Initiative
Recognition Award Winner 2008
The Alley-Flat Initiative (AFI) models the power of collaboration as students and the community come together to solve the complex problem of building sustainable, affordable housing. Through this initiative, students connect with leading, affordable housing agencies in Austin, TX to build secondary dwelling units or alley-flats, providing housing options that meet the shifting needs of a growing community. Unique in its hands-on approach, AFI brings students into the community to assess neighborhood and client needs. This preliminary research shapes students’ design process. Finally, students participate in collecting and analyzing data that will contribute to improved unit performance. The approach combines the active participation of the community with academic instruction in a manner that allows students to experience the consequences of their decisions.
Learning Objectives:
- Engage students with community during all phases and elements of the housing design process
- Challenge students to apply their growing capacity as designers to address the needs of traditionally underserved populations
- Create a flexible system for bringing sustainable and affordable housing to communities
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Website: The Alley Flat Initiative.
University of Virginia
ecoMOD
Recognition Award Winner 2008
ecoMOD is a research and design / build / evaluate project at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. The project aims to create a series of ecological, modular and affordable house prototypes. Working in partnership with the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science, as well as community housing agencies, the program explores methods for bringing sustainable housing to low-income residents. The program engages an interdisciplinary group of architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, historic preservation, business, environmental science, planning and economics students participate in the multi-year effort as they design, construct and evaluate all phases of the project.
Learning Objectives:
- Reduce the environmental impact of the built environment
- Overcome the misconception that green building is inaccessible to low-income housing
- Instill an understanding that designers and engineers must take responsibility for their work
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Website: ecoMOD. Learn more about this program and read testimonials by participating students.
University of Washington
HighPerPod: Zero Energy Classroom
Incentive Grant Winner 2009
HighPerPod is a design-build-test program aimed at creating a high performance, net-zero energy modular classrooms suited to the particulars of the place and people of the Puget Sound region. The goals of this academic + professional partnership are to equip architecture students with the knowledge and tools necessary for delivering beautiful, high-performance, low-energy buildings, and to demonstrate the economic and environmental potential of new methods, systems and materials for creating the next generation of high-performance learning environments.
The program is a one-year, repeatable cycle of five courses beginning in the summer with a field investigations seminar, followed in the fall by a research seminar. Central to this program is the Integrated Project Delivery Studio where student teams from architecture, construction management, engineering, and other disciplines. These teams will conceive and develop modular classroom designs including construction logistics and scheduling plans, cost estimates, and computational energy analysis. Students will develop construction documents for a selected design during the fourth course. The program will culminate with a construction studio to build the modular classroom prototype. This classroom then serves as a living laboratory, monitored and evaluated by students using it as their design studio space while developing the next round of designs proposals.
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Website: HighPerPod