| Merging the theoretical and the practical New SIS building becomes a case study in “green” by Sally Acharya In the course of a class, students may undergo many changes, but they tend to be internal. New ideas. New skills. New ways of looking at the world. In Paul Wapner’s class, students are hoping to see different kinds of changes. Bike racks, for instance. Solar panels. Perhaps even a garden for Washington, D.C.’s, underprivileged families, located on the roof of the new home for the School of International Service (SIS). 
Today’s freshmen may well finish their SIS careers in airy, light-filled classrooms with windows that can open to the spring breeze, surrounded by walls and ceilings of recycled and natural material, and sitting on chairs with plant-based or recycled cores. There’s even a plan for a green roof that provides a habitat for birds.
Current SIS building |
Regardless of whether their ideas are ultimately incorporated into the design, the students who have spent a semester studying, analyzing, and making recommendations on the innovative building will come away with an intimate understanding of how environmental ideals can be translated into concrete and glass. The new SIS building, which could break ground next year and welcome its first classes as early as 2009, is intended to be a showcase for design that is eco-friendly, sustainable, and socially just. SIS sees the “green” building as a way to embody its philosophy of working for positive change in the world. Wapner sees something else as well: an opportunity for his students. “I thought, gosh, we have this tremendous opportunity to be working with very visionary architects, and with a building committee that has some commitments to quite lofty goals,” says Wapner, director of the global environmental politics program at SIS. “It would be great to take it to the next level, so it’s really an SIS-wide and even a schoolwide effort.” While many aspects of the building depend on unknown factors, such as how much money is raised, one thing is clear: students at AU over the next few years will have a front seat at the creation of an innovative “green” building of the type usually found only in textbooks, or at locations too far for AU students to visit. Even the most casual observers will learn a lot about environmental design at AU over the next few years. But Wapner decided to go a step further and use the building as the subject of instruction and as a way to translate the goals of sustainable development into practice. So he developed a class for undergraduate and graduate students called Practicum: Sustainable Design (SIS 519) that centers around specific aspects of the proposed design. Some students are charged with analyzing how the building can best use solar energy within the design scheme established by the architects. Other students are detailed to look at the proposed “living roof,” a plant-filled habitat intended to support biodiversity and filter rainwater. Still others are looking at sustainable materials, student needs, fund raising, and educational aspects of the building. They’ll present their recommendations to the building committee this week, and while it’s too soon to tell if any of their ideas will be incorporated into the finished project, some have intrigued the architects. For instance, in their critiques of the design, which Wapner shared with the architects, students observed that while the building provided much-needed office space for faculty, the number of classrooms seemed insufficient. As a result, the architects increased the number of classrooms in the current plan, Wapner said. The number of bike racks may also increase. Student papers will be posted on the SIS Web site that educates the public and campus community about the building—which the students are redesigning. “I’ve always been interested in the environmental movement, but I’ve never really found a way I could integrate it with the rest of society,” says Stephanie LaPorte ’08, who is working on the Web site. In a class last semester, she was intrigued by a book written by the project’s architect, William McDonough, whose blend of elegant form with environmental function inspired Time magazine to name him in 1999 as a “Hero for the Planet.” “The way he approached it, you don’t have to go back to the earth and live in wood huts. You can still live comfortable lives and appreciate the needs of nature and build off nature as a model,” LaPorte says. Graduate student Liz Falk is part of the group working on the “green roof.” Her group’s proposal: Go beyond the notion of habitat and incorporate social justice into the design by using the space to grow food for Washington, D.C.’s, underprivileged families. Her group’s research discovered that a garden could produce about 100 pounds of vegetables per square foot over an eight-month growing season, which could provide as many as 30 families with food. The idea has intrigued the architects. “They were excited about it. Having their support through this has been really, really helpful,” Falk says. While it’s too early to say if the students’ ideas will be implemented, since they still have to meet a host of professional and financial criteria, “we have some green lights, which have been nice to see.” Of course, the process is still evolving, but it’s clear to Wapner that students are being heard. “The idea is kind of twofold,” he says. “One is to use the building effort pedagogically to put students in a very practically oriented setting where they can learn about sustainable design, and learn about it by doing, rather than reading and speculating. Secondly, it’s to democratize or expand the conversation about the building to students as well, because they’re kind of the key stakeholders in the building project.” The building committee hoped from the beginning to include students, but the presence of class members on the committee has helped students have a sustained presence, Wapner said. “Most of us won’t be here to see it be built,” Falk says. “But we feel that AU, and any university, should start taking a stance toward paying attention to environmental issues. The students in the class have felt AU can really serve as example in Washington, D.C.” “I think the best thing I’ve learned—and I think this is the most valuable thing about the class—is it’s so hands-on,” says LaPorte. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, we’d like this for the building.’ It’s, ‘We’d like this, then let’s go out and make it happen.’” |
