architecture as pedagogy ii

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Conservation Biology, Pages 597–600Volume 11, No. 3, June 1997

Conservation Education

Architecture as Pedagogy II

“The worst thing we can do to our children is to convince them that ugliness is normal.”Rene Dubos

As commonly practiced, educationhas little to do with its specific settingor locality. The typical campus is re-garded mostly as a place where learn-ing occurs but is, itself, not believed tobe the source of useful learning. It isintended, rather, to be convenient, ef-ficient, or aesthetically pleasing, butnot instructional. It neither requiresnor facilitates competence or mindful-ness. By that standard, the same edu-cation could happen as well in Califor-nia or in Kazakhstan, or on Mars, forthat matter. The same could be saidof the buildings and landscape thatmake up a college campus (Orr 1993).The design of buildings and land-scape is thought to have little ornothing to do with the process oflearning or the quality of scholarshipthat occurs in a particular place. Infact, buildings and landscape reflect ahidden curriculum that powerfullyinfluences the learning process.

The curriculum embedded in anybuilding instructs as fully and aspowerfully as any course taught init. Most of my classes, for example,are taught in a building that I thinkDescartes would have liked. It is abuilding with lots of squareness andstraight lines. There is nothing what-soever that reflects its locality innortheast Ohio in what had oncebeen a vast forested wetland (Sher-man 1996). How it is cooled, heated,and lighted and at what cost to theworld is an utter mystery to its occu-pants. It offers no clue about the ori-gins of the materials used to build it.It tells no story. With only minormodifications it could be convertedto use as a factory or prison. Whenclasses are over, students seldom lin-

ger for long. The building resonateswith no part of our biology, evolution-ary experience, or aesthetic sensibili-ties. It reflects no understanding ofecology or ecological processes. It isintended to be functional, efficient,minimally offensive, and little more.But what else does it do?

First, it tells its users that locality,knowing where you are, is unimpor-tant. To be sure, this is not said in somany words anywhere in this or anyother building. Rather, it is said tac-itly throughout the entire building.Second, because it uses energy waste-fully, the building tells its users thatenergy is cheap and abundant andcan be squandered with no thoughtfor the morrow. Third, nowhere inthe building do students learn aboutthe materials used in its constructionor who was downwind or down-stream from the wells, mines, for-ests, and manufacturing facilitieswhere those materials originated orwhere they eventually will be dis-carded. And the lesson learned ismindlessness; it teaches that discon-nectedness is normal. And try as onemight to teach that we are impli-cated in the larger enterprise of life,standard architectural design mostlyconveys other lessons. There is of-ten a miscalibration between the les-son of interconnectedness when it istaught in classes and the way build-ings actually work. Buildings are pro-visioned with energy, materials, andwater, and dispose of their waste inways that say to students that theworld is linear and that we are notpart of the larger web of life. Finally,there is no apparent connection inthis or any other building on campus

to the larger set of issues having todo with climatic change, biotic im-poverishment, and the unraveling ofthe fabric of life on Earth. Studentsbegin to suspect, I think, that thoseissues are unreal, or that they are un-solvable in any practical way, or thatthey occur somewhere else.

Is it possible to design buildingsand entire campuses in ways thatpromote ecological competence andmindfulness (Lyle 1994)? Throughbetter design is it possible to teachour students that our problems aresolvable and that we are connectedto the larger community of life? Asan experiment, I organized a class ofstudents in 1992–1993 to developwhat architects call a pre-programfor an environmental studies centerat Oberlin College. Twenty-five stu-dents and a dozen architects metover two semesters to develop thecore ideas for the project. The firstorder of business was to questionwhy we ought to do anything at all.Once the need for facilities was estab-lished, the participants questionedwhether we ought to build new facil-ities or renovate an existing build-ing. Students and faculty examined adozen or so possibilities to renovateand for a variety of reasons decidedthat the best approach was new con-struction. The basic program thatemerged from the year-long classcalled for an approximately 14,000-square-foot building that

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discharged no wastewater, i.e.,drinking water in, drinking waterout;

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generated more electricity than itused;

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used no materials known to becarcinogenic, mutagenic, or endo-crine disrupters;

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used energy and materials withgreat efficiency;

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promoted competence with envi-ronmental technologies;

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used products and materials grownor manufactured sustainably;

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was landscaped to promote bio-logical diversity;

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promoted analytical skill in assess-ing full costs over the lifetime ofthe building;

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promoted ecological competenceand mindfulness of place;

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became in its design and opera-tions, genuinely pedagogical; and

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met rigorous requirements for full-cost accounting.

We intended, in other words, abuilding that caused no ugliness, hu-man or ecological, somewhere elseor at some later time.

Given opposition of the collegepresident, the project sat on theshelf for nearly 2 years before beingendorsed by a new president in thespring of 1995. With the approval ofthe trustees, the project went for-ward in June of 1995. The terms ofthe approval required funding from“sources not otherwise likely to giveto the college,” and two years inwhich to do the design work andbring the project to groundbreaking.Both requirements influenced thepace and character of the project.The fact that we could not solicitfunds from donors affiliated in anyway with the college required thatthe building be designed to be aswidely appealing as possible. But noother kind of building would beworth doing. The 2-year timetablerequired that we move quickly to se-lect an architect and design teamand get on with the job at hand.

As a first step, we hired two gradu-ates from the Class of 1993 to helpcoordinate the design of the projectand engage students, faculty, andthe wider community in the design

process. We also hired architect,John Lyle, to help conduct the majordesign charettes or planning sessionsthat began in the fall of 1995. Some250 students, faculty, and commu-nity members participated in the 13charettes in which the goals for thecenter were developed and refined.In the same period we advertised theproject nationally and eventually re-ceived 26 applications from architec-tural firms with interests in the emerg-ing field of “green architecture.” Weselected 5 for interview and in Janu-ary of 1996, selected William Mc-Donough & Partners in Charlottes-ville, Virginia.

No architect alone, however tal-ented, could design the building thatwe proposed. It was necessary, there-fore, to assemble a design team thatwould meet throughout the process.To fulfill the requirement that thebuilding generate more electricitythan it used, we engaged Amory Lov-ins and Bill Browning from the RockyMountain Institute as well as scien-tists from NASA, Lewis Space Cen-ter. In order to meet the standard ofzero discharge we hired John Toddand Michael Shaw, the leading fig-ures in the field of ecological engi-neering. For landscaping we broughtin John Lyle and the firm of Andro-pogon, Inc. from Philadelphia. Tothis team we added structural and me-chanical engineers (Lev Zetlin, Inc.,New York City), and the contractingfirm from Akron. During the program-ming and schematic design phase, thisteam and representatives from the col-lege met by conference call weeklyand in regular working sessions.

The team approach to architec-tural design was a new process forthe college. Typically, the architectsdo their work alone, passing fin-ished blueprints along to the struc-tural and mechanical engineers whodo their thing and hand the projectoff to the landscape architects. Byengaging the full design team fromthe beginning we intended to maxi-mize the integration of building sys-tems and technologies and the rela-tionship between the building and

its landscape. Early on we decidedthat the standard for technology inthe building was to be state-of-the-shelf, but the standard for the overalldesign of the building and its varioussystems was to be state-of-the-art. Inother words, we did not want therisk of untried technologies, but wedid want the overall product to be atthe frontier of what is now possibleto do with ecologically smart design.

The building program called formajor changes, not only in the de-sign process but also in the selectionof materials, relationship to manufac-turers, and in the way we counted thecosts of the project. We intended touse materials that did not compro-mise the dignity or health of peoplesomewhere else. We also wanted touse materials that had as little em-bodied fossil energy as possible,hence giving preference to those lo-cally manufactured or grown. In theprocess we discovered how little isgenerally known about the ecologi-cal and human effects of the materi-als system and how little the presenttax and pricing system supportsstandards upholding ecological orhuman integrity. Unsurprisingly, wealso discovered that the present sys-tem of building codes does little to en-courage innovation leading to greaterresource efficiency and environmen-tal quality.

Typically, buildings are a kind ofsnapshot of the state of technologyat a given time. In this case, how-ever, we intended for the building toremain technologically dynamic overa long period of time. In effect weproposed that the building adapt orlearn as the state of technologychanged and as our understandingof design became more sophisti-cated. This meant that we did notnecessarily want to own particularcomponents of the building such asthe photovoltaic electric systemwhich would be rendered obsolete asthe technology advanced. We areexploring other arrangements, in-cluding leasing materials and tech-nologies that will change markedlyover the lifetime of the building.


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The same strategy applied to mate-rials. McDonough & Partners regardedthe building as a union of two differ-ent metabolisms; one industrial, theother ecological. Materials that mighteventually decompose into soil wereconsidered part of an ecological me-tabolism. Otherwise they were partof an industrial metabolism andmight be leased from the manufac-turer and eventually returned as afeedstock to be remanufactured intonew product.

The manner in which we ap-praised the total cost of the projectrepresented another departure fromstandard practice of design and con-struction. Costs are normally consid-ered synonymous with the those ofdesign and construction. As a conse-quence, institutions tend to ignorethe costs that buildings incur overexpected lifetimes as well as all ofthose other costs to environment andhuman health not included in theprices of energy, materials, and wastedisposal. The costs of this project,accordingly, were higher becausewe included

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students, faculty, and communitymembers in the design process;

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research into materials and tech-nologies to meet program goals;

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higher performance standards (e.g.,zero discharge and net energy ex-port);

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more sophisticated technologies;

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greater efforts to integrate tech-nologies and systems; and

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a building maintenance fund inthe project budget.

In addition, we expect to do a mate-rials audit of the building, includingan estimate of the amount of CO

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re-leased by the construction, alongwith a menu of possibilities to offsetthese costs.

The project is on schedule for a1998 groundbreaking with a tenta-tive completion date of spring, 1999.The basic energy, lighting, and fluiddynamics models have been com-pleted and we now know that the

goals described in the building pro-gram can be met within reasonablecosts. When completed the buildingwill generate most or all of its elec-tricity. It will purify wastewater onsite. It will minimize or eliminate theuse of toxic materials. It will be de-signed to remain technologically dy-namic well into the future. It will beinstrumented to display energy andsignificant ecological data in theatrium. The story of the building willbe prominently displayed through-out the structure. It will be land-scaped to include a small restoredwetland and forest as well as gar-dens and orchards. In short, it is be-ing designed and built to instruct itsusers in the arts of ecological com-petence and the possibilities of eco-logical design applied to buildings,energy systems, wastewater, land-scapes, and technology.

As important as the building andits landscape are, the more impor-tant effect of the project has been itsimpact on those who participated inthe project. Some of the studentswho devoted time and energy to theproject began to describe it as their“legacy” to the college. Because oftheir work on the project many ofthem learned about ecological de-sign and how to solve real problemsby doing it with some of the bestpractitioners in the world. Some ofthe faculty who participated in theeffort and who were skeptical aboutthe possibility of changing the insti-tution, came to see change as some-times possible. And some of thetrustees and administrators who ini-tially saw this as a risky project, per-haps came to regard risks incurredfor the right goals as worthwhile.

The real test, however, lies ahead.It will be tempting for some, nodoubt, to regard this as an interest-ing, but isolated experiment havingno relation to other buildings now inthe planning stage or for campuslandscaping or resource manage-ment. The pedagogically challengedwill see no further possibilities forrethinking the process, substance,and goals of education. If so, the

Center will exist as an island on acampus that mirrors the larger cul-ture. On the other hand, the Collegeand those that administer it have amodel that might inform architec-tural standards for all new construc-tion and renovation; decisions aboutlandscape management; financial de-cisions about payback times and full-cost accounting; courses and projectsaround the solution to real prob-lems; and how we engage the widercommunity.

By some estimates, humankind ispreparing to build more in the nexthalf century than it has built through-out all of recorded history. If we dothis inefficiently and carelessly, wewill cast a long ecological shadowon the human future. If we fail topay the full environmental costs ofdevelopment, the resulting ecologi-cal and human damage will be verylarge. To the extent that we do notaim for efficiency and the use of re-newable energy sources, the energyand maintenance costs will unneces-sarily divert capital from other andfar better purposes. The dream of sus-tainability, however defined, wouldthen prove to be only a fantasy. Ideasand ideals need to be rendered intomodels and examples that makethem visible, comprehensible, andcompelling. Who will do this?

More than any other institution inmodern society, colleges and univer-sities have a moral stake in thehealth, beauty, and integrity of theworld our students will inherit. Wehave an obligation to provide ourstudents with tangible models thatcalibrate our values and capabilities,models that they can see, touch, andexperience. We have an obligationto create grounds for hope in ourstudents who sometimes definethemselves as “generation X.” Buthope is different than wishful think-ing so we have a corollary obligationto equip our students with the analyt-ical skills and practical competencenecessary to act on high expecta-tions. When the pedagogical abstrac-tions, words, and whole courses donot fit the way the buildings and

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landscape constituting the academiccampus in fact work, they learn thathope is just wishful thinking orworse, rank hypocrisy. In short, wehave an obligation to equip our stu-dents to do the hard work ahead of

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learning to power civilization bycurrent sunlight;

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reducing the amount of materials,water, and land use per capita;

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growing their food and fiber sus-tainably;

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disinventing the concept of waste;

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preserving biological diversity;

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restoring ecologies ruined in thepast century;

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rethinking the political basis ofmodern society;

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developing economies that can besustained within the limits of na-ture; and

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distributing wealth fairly withinand between generations.

No generation ever faced a moredaunting agenda. True, but none everfaced more exciting possibilities ei-

ther. Do we now have or could weacquire the know-how to power civ-ilization by current sunlight or to re-duce the size of the “human foot-print” (Wackernagel & Rees 1996) orgrow our food sustainably or pre-vent pollution or preserve biologicaldiversity or restore degraded ecolo-gies? In each case I believe the an-swer is “yes.” Whether we possessthe will and moral energy to do sowhile rethinking political and eco-nomic systems and the distributionof wealth within and between gen-erations remains to be seen.

Finally, the potential for ecologi-cally smarter design in all of its mani-festations in architecture, landscapedesign, community design, the man-agement of agricultural and forestlands, manufacturing, and technol-ogy does not amount to a fix for allthat ails us. Reducing the amount ofdamage we do to the world per-cap-ita will only buy us a few decades,perhaps a century if we are lucky. Ifwe squander that reprieve, we willhave succeeded only in delaying theeventual collision between unfet-tered human desires and the limits

of the Earth. The default setting ofour civilization needs to be reset toensure that we build a sustainableworld that is also humanly sustain-ing. This is not a battle between leftand right or haves and have-nots as itis often described. At a deeper levelthe issue has to do with art andbeauty. In the largest sense, whatwe must do to ensure human tenureon the Earth is to cultivate a newstandard that defines beauty as thatwhich causes no ugliness somewhereelse or at some later time.

David W. Orr

Department of Environmental Studies, OberlinCollege, Oberlin, OH 44074, U.S.A.

Literature Cited

Lyle, J. 1994. Regenerative design for sustain-able development. John Wiley, New York.

Orr, D. 1993. Architecture as pedagogy. Con-servation Biology

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226–228.Sherman, T. 1996. A place on the glacial till.

Oxford University Press, New York.Wackernagel, M., and W. Rees. 1996. Our

ecological footprint. New Society Publish-ers, Philadelphia.

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