OPENING REMARKS
Presenter: Cheri Hendricks, Assoc. AIA
Chair of the Committee on Architect for Education Leadership Group and [principal] with Broadview Associates Ltd. in Seattle, Wash.

So: why are we here? In the next 10 to 20 years, the U.S. will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on school construction. Each of those schools will last an average of 80 years.

Because of the massive amounts of energy they consume, buildings, through their greenhouse gas emissions, are the number one contributor to climate change. As the global warming predicted 40 years ago becomes an everyday reality, it is almost too late to escape the consequences of our past behaviors. However, we do not need to continue settling for more of the same in our profession. It is imperative that we 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.

Our goal for this conference is no less than to fundamentally change the way school design is practiced. While designing "high performance" schools and designing to LEED standards have been important to raising awareness of these issues, the truth is that these are just baby steps that will be insufficient to reduce our impact enough to matter.

We have scouted the horizon to find those pioneers who have clues about how to understand our work as interventions in ecological systems rather than as isolated projects. We have brought folks who can point to ways to work with materials and systems that mimic the natural world and thus eliminate toxins and waste rather than producing them. We will look at ways that radical changes in our individual and collective behaviors might be provoked.

In a world of increasing awareness of our interdependence with all other life on the planet, we have a responsibility to ensure that the carbon emissions and other impacts we all created to get here are justifiable. May the learning environment we create by our being together inspire us and equip us to move forward into a new way of practice.

Quotes to Ponder

• Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous. (Leonardo da Vinci)
  
  
• A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life. (Mary Oliver)
  
  
• In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. (Eric Hoffer)
  
  
• If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going. (Professor Irwin Corey)
  
  
• Almost anything you do will be insignificant, and it is very important that you do it. (Gandhi)
  
  
• Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. (Jane Wagner)

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