You Are Here: Green Design Principles in Foundational Architectural Curricula
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Shelton, Ted
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Abstract
Ideally, green design incorporates both the ethic of sustainability and ecological literacy as integral to the design process rather than as additive to it. In practice, this type of integral design requires complex understandings of and a facility with various technical, spatial, and natural systems. In order to imbed these complex abilities within the design process, it is first necessary to incorporate their basic principles within foundational curricula. Conversely, introducing these concepts later, either solely in technology courses or in a specialized "sustainability studio", only reinforces the additive notion that green design somehow stands apart from design proper. As many schools adopt the 2010 Imperative, the question of how to incorporate green design principles in foundational curricula is arising with regularity. This paper proposes a model for doing so using the experience of place as an organizing framework - beginning by grounding students in their own place (here) then developing their understandings of other places (there). This model posits that introducing fundamental issues of green design through experiential rather than technical means might allow consideration of the environment to become imbedded in the process of design as a source of richness and poetics. While not a focus of the paper, it is also suggested how this model could be extended into upper level courses by incrementally asking students to assume responsibility for a wider and wider physical realm (expanding here.)
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2008-03
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