Earth Day may arrive each April, but for architecture students and faculty, environmental design is increasingly part of the year-round curriculum.
What’s more, a growing number of American universities are challenging themselves to implement green principles on their own campuses. From ivy-covered walls and tree-lined walkways, new ideals are taking shape: highly efficient buildings — constructed of local, sustainable materials — that reduce waste and minimize strain on local infrastructures; a holistic approach that considers operational as well as construction costs; and entire universities that might someday achieve net zero environmental impact.
“To a large extent, the push is coming from the ground up, fueled by students’ passions and interests and enthusiasms,” says Peter MacKeith, associate dean in the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. “There is also a growing recognition that environmental considerations make good economic sense as well as good design sense. Today, it’s becoming almost a given that any design commission will address environmental issues.
MacKeith, who is organizing a national colloquium on The Sustainable University Campus March 28 and 30 at Washington University, notes that, while factors such as site and climate have always been part of the architectural equation, modern green design received a major boost in 1999, when the U.S. Green Building Council launched its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, guidelines.
The voluntary rating system employs a flexible, performance-based points system to evaluate sustainability in five areas: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Materials & Resources and Indoor Environmental Quality.
Since then, nearly 800 projects and more than 100 million gross-square-feet in all 50 states and eight countries have registered buildings for LEED certification. (Washington University’s Earth & Planetary Sciences Building, now under construction, was designed in accordance with LEED principles and registered for potential LEED certification.)
What’s more, analysis has shown that an upfront investment of about 2 percent to support green design would, on average, result in life cycle savings totaling about 20 percent of construction costs — 10 times the initial investment.
‘Doing the right thing’
“Environmental design doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive,” says Dan Hellmuth, AIA, affiliate assistant professor at Washington University and a LEED accredited architect. “Initial cost outlays can be very minimal. Oftentimes, sustainability is really more a design issue — a matter of knowing what to do.”
For example, storm water can be a major issue for any large development. Asphalt parking lots collect oil drippings and other toxicants that, washed into local sewer systems, increase the burden on municipal treatment facilities.
A simple, low-cost remedy involves channeling runoff into vegetated bioswales — basically, a kind of natural filtration system employing hardy grasses and other planting. Through a combination of gravity, microbial decomposition and solar radiation, the bioswale removes and breaks down pollutants, allowing the cleaned water to discharge back into nearby creeks or rivers.
Building efficiency, meanwhile, can be effected by something as simple as color. Flat black roofing material absorbs heat and radiates it into the building, while a white roofing system can reflect heat and reduce the cooling load. Other strategies might include upgrading windows or HVAC systems; switching to cleaner-burning fuels; or even developing a “living system” — a kind of indoor wetland — to clean waste water.
As both owners and tenants, Hellmuth adds, “Universities have the perspective to understand the potential savings, where commercial developers,” who turn buildings over to clients or pass operational costs on in the form of rent, “have other motivations.”
In many respects, the university campus makes an ideal testing ground for environmental innovations.
“A university is a kind of enclosed ecological system,” Hellmuth explains. “You have a large degree of control over input and output — that is, over power and water, over how you build and maintain buildings, over internal transportation and over what you buy and what you don’t buy.
“At the same time, there’s the pedagogical notion that, because we’re training the next generation of students to take care of the world, we should be doing the right thing ourselves.”
The Sustainable University Campus takes place March 28 and 30 at the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. March 28 will feature a series of Campus Ecology Workshops. Cost is $35. March 30 will feature The Sustainable University: A Chancellor’s Sesquicentennial Colloquium. The colloquium is free and open to the public. For more information, call (314) 935-6293.