Sustainable Design

Matthew Taylor, assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Construction Management, hopes that someday soon “sustainable design” is just going to be design.

Having all design be sustainable is critical to our future, says Don Bender, director of the Wood Materials and Engineering Laboratory. The building sector currently consumes 48 percent of the energy produced in the United States, creating ever-increasing economic, environmental, and geopolitical impacts.

“Increased efficiency through the use of sustainable materials, methods, and technologies is paramount,” he says.

The College of Engineering and Architecture is responding to the challenge through the establishment of the Institute for Sustainable Design. The institute will bring faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, design professionals, manufacturers, and suppliers together in a stimulating, interactive environment that will serve as a model for how academia and industry can solve societal problems of sustainability, says Bender.

He has worked for the past year with faculty in architecture, construction management, and engineering to bring the institute together.

• The institute builds on existing strengths in renewable building materials discovery and sustainable building design, particularly through the worldrenowned work of the Wood Materials and Engineering Laboratory (WMEL).
• The college also is unique in having architecture, construction management, and engineering programs within one college, creating particularly strong synergistic opportunities.

In the past, the WMEL has collaborated with architecture faculty on the solar decathlon project as well as on a woodplastic composite demonstration building. The idea is to build on those successfulcollaborations, says Bender.

“Our success has come about at the WMEL from an almost total disregard for disciplinary boundaries,” he says. “This is a way to increase cross-discipline collaboration and synergies. Many of us are working on aspects of the built environment in relative isolation. This institute allows us to get out of our silos and to work together.”

The Institute for Sustainable Design will focus on changing design and construction of the built environment to increase sustainability, developing green building materials and systems, serving as a resource for architecture, engineering, and construction firms in the United States, and developing innovative multi-disciplinary education programs.

“The institute will be a place where issues of the global and local are developed and reconciled,” says Greg Kessler, director of the School of Architecture and Construction Management. “It represents the ideal of how the university can foster economic development while addressing significant and fundamental social and global issues that confront our civilization.”