Design Meets Sustainability - A Visit to SCAD

One of the delegation’s most insightful encounters was with the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). The college is one of the nation’s leading design schools and offers an undergraduate minor, an MA as well as an MFA in Design for Sustainability. We met with Design for Sustainability professor Scott Boylston to learn more about SCADs graduate program in Design for Sustainability.

At SCAD sustainable design is based on a “triple bottom line” which considers environmental, social and economic health and thus aims to make design holistic and equitable. The idea is to think of design as a multi-faceted discipline which recognizes the scope of existing challenges and applies systems thinking and design strategy to come up with solutions that not only meet technological standards but also fit into individual social contexts. As a result, SCAD defines technical innovation, perceptual innovation and social innovation as means with which environmental, economic and social wellbeing can be achieved. Perceptual innovation addresses aspects like legitimizing alternatives, debunking product-based wellbeing and information visualization while social innovation focuses on creating participatory and inclusive designs as well as empowering localized assets.

 SCAD’s approach to sustainable design has already materialized in many interesting projects including innovative practices to manage organic waste in urban spaces, encouraging sustainable consumer behavior through an outdoor gear rental mobile app and building a greenhouse from reclaimed materials to provide fresh produce to residents of a food desert and function as a center for vocational training.

The delegation went on to meet with the Director of External Realtions Erina Tandy, who gave us a guided tour of the SCAD campuses. SCAD students have access to a multitude of facilities and equipment, including project workshops, a photo studio, a fully equipped carpentry, a 3D printing studio and a paint shop. Our campus tour was concluded by a visit to the SCAD Museum of Art which currently hosts Rashaad Newsome’s exhibition “Orders of Chivalry”.


To learn more about SCAD’s Design for Sustainability programs visit: http://www.scad.edu/academics/programs/design-sustainability

Thank you Scott Boylston and Erina Tandy for an inspiring presentation and a delightful guided tour.

Visiting Epsten Group - A comparative look at sustainable building practices

On September 30^th, the delegation went to visit the offices of the Epsten Group, a multidisciplinary architectural firm based in Atlanta, which focuses on commissioning and offering consulting advice on sustainable building design.

Even before being introduced to the company's work, the group's offices made their mission clear: Being located in a previously economically deprived area just outside of downtown Atlanta, the group chose to remodel an old workshop and reuse old building materials in order to reduce waste and achieve LEED platinum certification for their office, which opened in 2011. As the old roof could not handle the weight of a typical installation of PV panels, the company ingeniously decided to go with 5kW of flexible and lightweight solar panels that could directly be attached to the roof without the need of a heavy installation rack.

Dagmar Epsten herself, who founded the Group in 1991, gave us a presentation on her lifelong mission to make commercial buildings more sustainable. A German expat, she moved to the US after her diploma in order to use her architectural abilities in Atlanta and the Southeast. Since then, the group has been commissioning new buildings as well as retrofitting existing ones. Being involved from early-on in the planning process allows the group to take a holistic approach to planning, not only designing a sustainable building on paper, but also making sure that the building structure is actually built and used accordingly. Furthermore, Epsten Group has been particular active in evaluating and granting LEED certification to commercial building owners, a market that shows strong growth in the US. Being able to certify a buildings sustainable merits has become a competitive advantage in assuring real estate developers and future owners that a building is cheap to maintain and manage. This, in turn, can help achieve a higher selling price on the market. In Germany, where state-set buildings standards on efficiency are stricter, LEED has not taken up as much for commercial development, but particularly international real estate companies like to also rely on LEED certification in Germany, China and around the world, as it has become a universal selling point.

As LEED is primarily catering to commercial housing, we also talked with Epsten Group employees on the different approaches that are being taking towards building sustainable residential homes on both sides of the Atlantic. Here, a number of differences emerged: Germans move less often from one place to another and have a stronger culture of being personally involved in the planning of residential housing. Therefore, they often personally ensure that their house is energy efficient and overall sustainable, which also saves them cost of operation in the long-term. In the United States on the other hand, housing is often developed by professional developers who are in a competition to offer the lowest price per developed square-feet - a competition, that can sometime go at the expense of sustainability and energy-efficiency concerns. This is further accelerated by low energy prices, which allow efficiency concerns to take the backseat in comparison to other considerations. Furthermore, differences in building usage were discussed that have strong effects on the overall sustainability of buildings: Whereas Germans like to be in control of their flat or house and open windows regularly to let in fresh air (which is more doable in Germany, where temperatures are more moderate than in Atlanta), Americans prefer managed environments with included ventilation and air-conditioning that also take indoor air quality in account.

In consequence, developing sustainable buildings needs more than just using the latest energy-efficient technology, it also means taking the future end-users behaviour and building cultures into account. Our visit at Epsten Group gave us a great impression on the intercontinental differences and communalities in building development. Dagmar Epsten herself, being a translator between these different cultures, was the perfect host to explain those different approaches to us. Thank you for the fascinating insights!

Visit at the Water Hub - Emory University

At the Emory University we had the opportunity to see and learn about a water recycling system, the WaterHub, which is the first system of its kind in the US. The special thing about it is that it cleans waste water right on the campus and thus is able to provide nearly 40% of Emory’s total campus water needs. Thus Emory’s draw of water from Atlanta’s municipal water supply will reduce by up to 146 million gallons of water annually.

This shows another example which demonstrates that economic benefit and sustainable behavior fit together perfectly and complements one another. From my perspective a remarkable point is also the fact that the whole cleaning is done mainly through natural processes, for example cleaning the water through the roots of various plants. This shows us again that we don’t necessarily need to develop completely new techniques but rather to reclaim natural original methods - basically let nature doing its job. Water is becoming rapidly more and more of an alarming issue or already is one, as you can see f. ex. in California.

In my opinion water is even more of an issue than switching to renewable energies because we currently still have several possibilities to produce energy but we do not have an alternative to water. So it’s even more important to find ways to recycle it, like The WaterHub is doing it already.

#LL

“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it”

Comment on Visit to Spelman

 

The quotation by Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and president of the Childrens Defense Fund, is to be found on one of the halls at Spelman College in Atlanta. Emphasizing the immense impact of education, not only on the individual but on communal life, this sign caught my attention.

As we toured through some of the more than 20 buildings of Spelman College campus, my fascination for this college’s spirit grew more and more. Paying attention to the Students wellness, both physical and mental, Spelman College replenished my understanding of US-American colleges. The quotations from powerful and successful women who gained appreciation from civil society for their economical, ethical, political, social or spiritual engagement over the decades seem to be echoing from the walls, attempting to encourage the current female Spelman students to speak out their mind and to work hard to succeed. Biblical sayings emphasize the beliefs in God and the strength of religion. They seem to remind the female students of their value and their important work in means of encouragement and empowerment.

The presentation of Spelman College’s successes in sustainability and the subsequent discussion with Spelman students brought up another aspect of climate change: The intersection between social justice and climate change, which is called climate justice. Climate justice is a term used to describe the ethical aspect of the consequences of global warming, taking equality, human and collective rights into consideration.

I was really impressed by the tour given by Art Frazier, the director of Facilities Management at Spelman College in three ways: Firstly, Spelman college is extremly engaged in sustainable initiatives, leading them to accomplish decreases in energy and water consumption. Secondly, I was delighted by the Spelman spirit being spread by all the motivational sayings and I wish my own university would adapt some of these habits being shown at Spelman. And thirdly, the educational approach that Spelman College has taken in terms of sustainability. From my point of view, education is that guiding principle that we have to focus on, when it comes to making human-beings more sensible for and to integrate sustainable issues into their repertory of behavioral patterns, I do see a huge potential in educating people because as Marian Wright Edelman said, Education is the key to finally leave the “world better than you found it”. #KJ

Visiting Spelman College: An exceptional and green campus community

After an intensive trip to Savannah, we headed back to Atlanta Monday night. Early Tuesday morning, our schedule continued directly with a visit of Spelman College. Spelman’s green leaders, Facility Manager Arthur Frazier and Environmental Science and Studies Instructor Na'Taki Osbourne Jelks, along with some of her students, welcomed us at their campus. In a very interesting presentation given by Mr. Frazier, we learned about Sustainable Spelman, a program driving not only energy efficiency on campus, but also ecological awareness amongst its students. The project has already been so successful that Spelman College was ranked the greenest HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) campus in the private institutions category. Spelman College has a variety of initiatives and projects aimed at increasing awareness, knowledge and action concerning sustainability. Moving towards sustainability, reconstruction measures have been going on in the course of the program. Redoing the campus saved Spelman College about 200 000 US$ on utility bills. Money, the college was able to invest in further sustainability projects. They demonstrated
that going green does not require additional spending as such but rather can be cost-saving.

Spelman College has proven to be an incredible example of how sustainability is not only financially efficient, but also profitable. Due to the greenhouse gas emissions the college saved with the remodeling of some of the campus facilities and thanks to Chevrolets campus energy efficiency campaign to reduce carbon emissions Spelman College was able to sell so called carbon credits to Chevrolet for about 100 000 US$.


We found Spelman College's focus on the impact individuals have on both the community they live in and the world at large particularly impressive. This became evident a quote by former President Tatum, who once said to an incoming freshman class “We have a choice to change the world”- A quote that still serves as a guiding principle for students at Spelman. A selected group of sustainable “Interns” and “Ambassadors” help to spread the word within the school’s student community. This shows once more how Spelman practices what it preaches-that sustainability is an individual lifestyle choice and not just a top-down approach.

The fact that Spelman College encourages its students to become advocates of social justice became evident when a student in the class pointed out how the importance of the interplay of social and environmental justice often is neglected- a statement we can only agree on. Apart from its sustainability efforts, Spelman College has shown to be an impressive college community, in which the college supports and empowers young women to develop leadership and to commit to positive social change. Spelman’s sustainability efforts extent beyond its campus and are aimed at reaching communities. #NC #RCU