News Analysis: The 'Green Era' Should Propagate Smarter Buildings

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson writes about a desirable world (this special link for SCUP constituents is not password-protected) in which designers and architects have enough time to work out the details on green, smart, living buildings:

The new star architecture would strive for "living building" status, a grail for the architecture profession. It would be made of recycled, nontoxic, and renewable materials. It would produce more energy than it uses. It would recycle rainwater and waste in a closed loop. It might even provide microhabitats for animal and plant life. In short, it would contribute to, rather than take from, the resources around us.

Moreover, it would be a building that teaches about natural systems, building systems, and a groundbreaking style of design—lessons that should be part of every college curriculum these days. Oberlin College's Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies was an early attempt at this kind of building. (It just so happens that Adam Joseph Lewis, a major donor to Oberlin's building, is a son of Peter B. Lewis, the insurance mogul who supported Gehry's Lewis Library at Princeton.)

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If the best colleges and universities want to be in the vanguard of design and research, they might start by setting examples with their buildings—making the way they work as sexy as they look.