Learning from green buildings that teach
Kathryn Janda and Alexandra von Meier
Janda and von Meier investigate two ‘green’ academic buildings: the Environmental
Technology Center at Sonoma State University and the Adam Joseph Lewis Center at
Oberlin College. Both are designed for use as teaching tools and both demonstrate
sustainable architecture. Both employ a variety of passive and active systems to achieve
their goals. Both have ‘epic’ stories to tell about the evaluation of their performance. As
self-proclaimed exemplars of sustainable architecture these buildings were set apart
from standard construction practice by a heightened degree of ‘inspection, assessment
and expectation’. But did the measures adopted by engineers and critics reflect the
intentions of the builders or did they quantify something different? What was it that the
buildings were designed to teach? The authors argue that the quantitative data
collected ‘may raise more questions about building performance than they resolve’.
Noting that ‘numbers rarely change our notions of what we already believe to be true’,
Janda and von Meier thus bring into question the use of quantitative data taken at a
particular moment in time as the sole criterion for the ‘goodness’ of buildings.
Introduction
Buildings present a significant challenge for the natural environment. Roodman and
Lenssen (1995: 5) claim, for instance, that buildings account for 16 per cent of the
world’s water use, 20 per cent of its wood harvest and 40 per cent of its material and
energy flows. Although new buildings can be constructed in a more sustainable fashion,
quite often they are not. What can we learn from those constructed to be sustainable?
Technical lessons are often sought from such exemplars. Did the argon-filled, doublepaned
windows in this building save energy? Did using paint low in volatile organic
compounds in that building reduce off-gassing? While such questions are important
stepping stones to ‘better’ designs, each green building example contains a set of
social lessons as well. David Orr (1993) has coined the phrase ‘architecture as pedagogy’
to describe the concept that we learn from buildings, not just in them. Similarly,
W. J. Rohwedder (2003) extends this idea to describe ‘pedagogy of place’.
To explore the lessons learned from specific architectures in particular places, we
investigate two ‘green’ academic buildings: the Environmental Technology Center
(ETC) at Sonoma State University, California
, and the Adam Joseph Lewis Center
(AJLC) at Oberlin College, Ohio. Both are designed to be used as teaching tools and
both demonstrate sustainable architecture. Both employ passive and active systems to
achieve these goals. Both also have ‘epic’ stories to tell about the social structures and
institutional values that resulted in the adoption of some architectural strategies and the
rejection of others. Finally, each author has first-hand knowledge of and daily experience with one of these buildings. Our own participation with these structures and our observation
of other uses and users helps to frame our understanding of the differences and
similarities between them. Through our comparative analysis, we hope to raise new
questions concerning the social and institutional context in which sustainable buildings
are constructed, used and evaluated.
These buildings were designed to be far better than average, but by what measure
are they better? Are there ways in which they are worse? Despite much public critical
acclaim, people involved with both buildings are frequently called on to prove that the
pedagogical, architectural and environmental theories behind them are working in practice.
Among many dimensions, we focus on the presence, absence and use of ‘data’,
looking at several factors with respect to data gathering, use and evaluation. First, we
examine how the presence or absence of quantitative data enhances or obscures
stories of building performance. Second, we describe how institutional requirements
shape the desire for and impact of ‘hard numbers’. Finally, we discuss who learns what
from ‘buildings that teach’: students, faculty and the academic institutions themselves.
Background
Although both the ETC and the AJLC have ample amounts of glass on the south side
and use thermal mass for passive heating and cooling, these buildings do not shout
‘sustainability’ to passers-by. Neither structure relies visually on elements that the
general public would likely identify as ‘green’: a biomorphic shape, obvious photovoltaic
arrays or windmills, or a garden on the roof.1 Instead, both building designs share a modern aesthetic and a geometric vocabulary typical of today’s commercial and institutional
structures (Figs 3.1 and 3.2).
The Environmental Technology Center at Sonoma State University (SSU) is a 2,200
square foot (204 square metre) building with one large seminar room that functions as
an auditorium, classroom and laboratory. It is situated on a site internal to the SSU
campus, which is located about an hour north of San Francisco. Funded in part by
grants from the National Science Foundation and the California Energy Commission
and completed in 2001, the ETC was conceived as a ‘building that teaches’
(Rohwedder 1998), offering an immediate hands-on experience of high-efficiency technology
and green building to general audiences as well as an abundance of real-time
data for building science buffs.
Use of the ETC comprises university classes – including technical courses on
energy, environmental studies courses and selected courses from other departments –
and classes and events involving outside agencies and the general public. These
include, for example, meetings by the local chapter of the Green Building Council,
training workshops for energy auditors, work meetings for Sonoma County’s Climate
Protection Campaign and public events such as the Green Building Expo, with lectures
and vendor exhibits. The ETC has also become a favourite classroom for two other
departments: the Psychology of Yoga class appreciates the warm floor in addition to
the light and spacious feel, and the a cappella Chamber Singers enjoy the acoustics.
The ETC was the subject of Congressional testimony before the House Energy
Subcommittee by its director (von Meier 2001), at the invitation of Congresswoman
Lynn Woolsey (Democrat), who had supported the ETC since its inception. Representative
Woolsey subsequently arranged for an Energy Subcommittee field hearing to
take place at the ETC, chaired by Congresswoman Judy Biggert (Republican, Illinois).
Nationally recognised energy experts testified at the field hearing (US House of Representatives
2002), with the space of the ETC serving as a concrete example of the
concepts of energy efficiency and renewable resource use they advocated.
Like the ETC, the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies serves many
purposes. The AJLC is a two-storey, 13,600 square foot (1,260 square metre) building
with three classrooms, a library, an auditorium, six offices, a conference room and a
kitchen. It also houses a ‘Living Machine’ that treats and internally recycles wastewater
from within the building, which is sited on the edge of the Oberlin College campus, near
Richardsonian Romanesque academic buildings and down the street from Victorian-era
homes. Like the ETC, it was designed as a building that teaches. In the words of David
Orr, the chair of Oberlin’s Environmental Studies Program, the project team wanted a
building that would ‘help redefine the relationship between humankind and the environment
– one that would expand our sense of ecological possibilities’ (Reis 2000).
The AJLC has enjoyed considerable critical acclaim. It has received architectural
awards from the American Institute of Architects, construction awards from national and
state contractors’ organisations and an Ohio governor’s award for energy efficiency and
has been named one of the thirty ‘Milestone Buildings for the Twentieth Century’ by the
US Department of Energy. An early model of the building is included in an architectural
textbook on the interactive effects of buildings and the environment (Fitch and
Bobenhausen 1999: 336), a diagram appears in a popular environmental science
textbook (Miller 2001b: 537), and it has been the subject of numerous articles in the
press. Part of its notoriety has to do with its star architectural team, William McDonough
and Partners, which is famous for several sustainable buildings as well as a book on the
topic of sustainability (McDonough and Braungart 2002). Part also has to do with the
dedication and eloquence of its on-campus champion, David Orr, who is a prolific writer
and a dynamic speaker and has published several articles about the AJLC’s design
process (Orr 2002, 2003a, 2003b). Orr also plans to use the AJLC as the basis of a
book on the subject of design and organisational learning.
Equally the AJLC has been the subject of much controversy. At the centre of this
debate is a contested statement that one of the goals of the AJLC was to be a ‘net
energy exporter’. An Oberlin faculty member outside the Environmental Studies
Program has argued that the building consumes far more energy than the photovoltaic
(PV) array delivers (Scofield 2002a, 2002b, 2002c). Proponents of the building do not
deny that it currently uses more energy than it generates; early documentation indicates
that the goal of net energy exportation was a long-term one, intended to be reached only
as PV efficiencies improved beyond the 15 per cent that is common today.
We believe that the stories surrounding these two buildings – including the range of
perspectives on how ‘efficient’ or ‘consumptive’ they are, as well as how their performance
is accounted for and by whom – have much to say about how expectations for
sustainable architecture are shaped. Although framed in technical terms (such as air
changes per hour or Btu per square foot) these goals have social implications as well as
technical bases.
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