Miles Whitman

English 145

Sustainable Architecture No Longer An Oxymoron

The typical last day of the quarter for a Cal Poly architecture studio class is a surreal scene: pieces of buildings litter the area; remnants of houses, office buildings, and apartments lie in rubble. The floor to ceiling windows are half-covered by cardboard, wood, plastic, and paper piled in front. The desks are buried beneath layers of unused material. Frenzied students are putting the finishing touches on their projects.

Architecture students work throughout the night several days a week designing and building models for their term projects. Many of these projects are designed to be “eco-friendly” or “green” buildings. But many of the materials used are merely thrown away. It appears that the reason for creating environmentally friendly buildings is not to be friendly to the environment, but rather to keep up with the current trend of building green. Not to say this is the case; In fact, many students genuinely want to lessen the environmental impacts of architecture. Why then is it the norm to invest so many resources like plastic, wood, and money on a project which most likely will not be built, and why are the materials not recycled or reused? Many architecture students have been asking the same questions.

Naoko Miyamoto, a third year architecture student, and proponent of environmentally economic design, described the end-of-quarter ritual: “They put a huge dumpster there” and from the balcony above, “you throw pretty much everything in except your final model.” She said that because everything is thrown in the thirty cubic yard dumpster, the contents cannot be recycled. There must be a better way to deal with the waste.

Eliminating physical models from the curriculum would reduce the amount of waste produced by the architecture department, but this is not an option. One of the reasons Cal Poly, SLO’s architecture department is so esteemed is because students receive hands on experience with designing, building, and marketing their ideas. Physical models are necessary to show clients what the finished product will look like and provide a more tangible sense of the project than computer models do. Reducing the number of physical models required would effectively reduce some of the waste produced by the architecture department, but the problem would persist.

The waste is due in part to the types and shapes of materials used. The typical model is made of thin, lightweight wood, glue, and sometimes plastics. Since the sheets of wood or plastic that are used to make the model are rectangular, and many of the shapes used to create the model are not, waste is produced. Not much maybe. But multiply this by the number of walls, floors, and ceilings of the building, and again by the number of students in a class, and again by the number of classes per quarter, and the waste begins to add up.

                  Buying all those materials can get expensive. Ms. Miyamoto estimated her quarterly spending to be upwards of $200 on materials alone. Adding in the costs of printing and mounting projects, the total is close to $300. This is instead of buying textbooks, but, unlike textbooks, materials cannot be sold back to the bookstore. Having a facility where materials can be stored for use by other students would significantly reduce this financial burden.

                  The architecture department holds a materials-exchange day once a quarter that allows students to reuse other students’ materials. The informal program draws students from different architecture classes and years and gives students the opportunity to obtain cheap materials. However, students do not have a place to hold all of their excess materials until the exchange, and once the exchange is over, the unclaimed materials are discarded. A new waste management facility proposed by students would reduce material waste, and, just as important, financial waste.

                  A group of students in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design have proposed an elegant solution to the waste problem: a facility on campus that accepts used materials and either sends them to be recycled, or houses them for reuse by other students. The facility was designed by CAED students Amelia Capron, Brandon Silveira, Diana Durany, Daniel Verango, and Kim Johnson for an environmental design class. The project, titled, “Design School Waste Stream Management”, could eliminate much of the waste produced by the CAED.

The project includes more than just the building; it focuses on student and faculty awareness. Professors would encourage students to use recyclable materials whenever possible and to eliminate extraneous projects or models. Quarterly e-mails would be sent to students and faculty about the facility, ensuring that it is utilized. Students would be encouraged to create models in a fashion that could be disassembled easily without ruining the materials. This could even be part of the curriculum since it would stimulate creative thinking and awareness of current trends. In fact, many new ideas have emerged similar to this idea. Modular housing or office buildings have been designed in order to reduce waste on a macro scale. These modular designs allow a house to be downsized after a child moves out, or to be expanded at a cheaper cost than normal houses. This proposed facility could have much more to offer the CAED than just a place to discard used materials.

                  Of course the waste management facility is not without costs. There are costs associated with construction, such as building materials, labor, and design. The facility must be operated by someone, so the program would need to factor in wages for employees. And the materials that are not reusable would need to be transported to a recycling plant. The money to build such a facility could possibly come from grants or student based fees. Since the basic design for the building is already available, much of the design cost would be eliminated. For inexpensive staffing, students could work at the facility and be paid with student based fees. The increase in fees would be offset by the free materials available from the waste management facility. The recyclables would need to be picked up on a regular basis, but since Cal Poly already has a recycling program, the materials could be picked up with the rest of the school’s recycling.

In addition to monetary costs, there are environmental impacts associated with the new building. The environmental impact of a building, known as its carbon footprint, can be added to the costs of construction when doing a cost – benefit analysis. The proposed facility however will have a relatively small carbon footprint. The building would be lit by natural light through south facing windows, which receive the maximum amount of sunlight, and would be a long, slender shape to gain maximum utility from the natural light. Over a relatively short period of time, perhaps a couple years, the environmental impact of construction will be “paid for” by the reduction of waste.

                  Sustainability refers to the ability to continue something in perpetuity. Nothing is truly sustainable, but increasing the efficiency of human endeavors will allow us to enjoy the things we wish to sustain far into the future. The waste issue of the Cal Poly architecture department is not a global problem. However, the cumulative effect of millions of minor issues like this one has global implications. Simple solutions like the one proposed by these students will potentially reduce the human impact on the environment.

Bibliography

Capron, Amelia; Silveira, Brandon; Durany, Diana; Verango, Daniel; Johnson, Kim. “Design Class Waste Stream Management”. (26 May 2009)

Miyamoto, Naoko. Personal Interview. 25 May 2009

Reich, Johnathan. <jreich@calpoly.edu>. 21 May 2009