REDEFINING SUSTAINABILITY: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR DESIGNING OUR FUTURE

Designing schools can provide many rewards, but it is also a practice that comes with great responsibility. As a nation, we will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on school construction over the next 10 to 20 years. We can choose whether to design the next generation of schools to teach about a more sustainable way of living, to use minimal energy, to eliminate the creation of toxins and waste and to be interdependent with natural systems. (Conference chair, Gerald [Butch] Reifert, AIA)

Seattle was the site of the Committee on Architecture for Education conference on sustainability because it is the only area in the U.S. where five projects have received an AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Green Projects Award. Conference participants toured several of these projects over the course of three full and stimulating days. They encountered speakers who challenged them to design beyond green: beyond reduced environmental impact to no impact, and ultimately to making a positive contribution to the environment. They learned about designing buildings that honor the place in which they are built and the natural systems that cradle that place—and about borrowing sustainable designs from nature, which has solved so many design problems so elegantly. Participants heard about the newest brain research and its implications for school design. They considered achievements and opportunities for further advocacy in federal, local and professional arenas, as well as ways to create an acceptance for—and ultimately a demand for—innovative and sustainable design in our society.

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