TEACH I NGTO WARD SUSTAINABILITY THE COOPER UNION | NYC
MARCH 13 & 14 | 2015
EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP ENVIRONMENT, SUSTAINABILITY AND DESIGN PRESENTED BY THE COOPER UNION INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE DESIGN THE WRIGHT INGRAHAM INSTITUTE THE IRWIN S. CHANIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AT THE COOPER UNION THE EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
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The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design Photograph by J. Henry Fair
TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY PREFACE
The question of how to imagine and realize a sustainable world is under discussion in many forums: architecture, urban planning, energy, and agriculture. Nations, communities, families, and cultures of all sizes and economic circumstances are examining the question. While there are many inspired speculations and remarkable experiments in place, the future upon which a productive discourse on sustainability hinges is dynamic and unpredictable. A solution that seems like a breakthrough one day may reveal a myriad of unintended consequences when put into practice. The search for educational strategies to address these novel demands presents both risk and potential for teachers of all levels. To teach toward sustainability, we will need to educate a new generation of students in ecological literacy. They must learn to understand energy and nutrient flows, and they need to become well versed in systems thinking, the nature of supply chains, consumption patterns, global and regional economics, and social justice. Students and educators alike must understand the long-term environmental impacts of what they design and reimagine how we will live. To inspire such a generation of students requires drastic changes in how we teach. In his book Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect (2004), David W. Orr states, “There are… better reasons to reform education, which have to do with the rapid decline in the habitability of the earth. The kind of discipline-centric education that enabled us to industrialize the earth will not necessarily help us to heal the damage caused by industrialization… I believe that educators must become students of the ecologically proficient mind and of the things that must be done to foster such minds. In time this will mean nothing less than the redesign of education itself.” While there are many inspired and useful programs throughout education, with regards to sustainability we clearly have our work cut out for us. The path toward a redesigned educational system is not succinctly laid out. However, it is clear that what is required is collaboration, insight and action from players across all fields. In the spirit of this collaboration, Teaching Towards Sustainability brought together a cross section of educational innovators who are working to meet the urgent pedagogical challenges of our time: understanding what sustainable societies might look like, where and how they might work, and how we can best educate for proficiency in environmental systems and critical resource management to anticipate the work of the future.
EVENT DESCRIPTION
Convened in March 2015, the workshop looked at precedents from the late 1960s and 1970s and a range of current approaches. The goal was to find common threads within the ideas and initiatives of the participants about what is (or may be) working and where the weaknesses and potential failures lie. The workshop examined how several models and particular strategies might be adapted to a range of environmental situations, institutions, cultures, and economic conditions. Teaching Towards Sustainability addressed predetermined sets of questions with the hope that these questions and subsequent discussions could lead to practical and informed action within the sphere of sustainability and environmental education. The event was a closed workshop for invited participants and observers to engage in focused, in-depth discussions. The workshop itself was organized into three segments, each pertaining to a different topic of interest. The three topics were: institutional models, field/project-based programs, and K–X education. Each segment included three to five presentations. Recognizing that all of the segments greatly overlap, presenters discussed their triumphs, working initiatives, concerns, and goals within their own efforts. Following each series of presentations, all of the speakers and observers participated in a roundtable discussion. Different sets of questions were utilized to direct roundtable discussions: qualitative questions focusing on the values and priorities within teaching toward sustainability, quantitative questions investigating the most effective tools and strategies to employ within sustainability education, lifetime questions concerning the evolution of sustainability education and how sustainable pedagogies can remain relevant through generational changes, and finally, design questions examining the role of systems design in teaching toward sustainability.
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QUALITATIVE QUESTIONS What are the fundamental values, priorities, and goals concerning sustainability education? 1. What is the purpose of sustainability education? 2. What are the priorities in teaching sustainability? 3. How can this Educators’ Workshop play a role in facilitating and fulfilling these qualities?
QUANTITATIVE QUESTIONS What are the most effective tools and strategies to employ within sustainability education? 1. How can educators move beyond the classroom/lecture format in the hopes of cultivating empirical understandings and paradigm shifts within sustainability education? 2. What is the meaning of leadership and empowerment in the context of teaching sustainability? What are the best tools and strategies for inspiring sustainability leadership? 3. How can educators deal with uncertainty and change within traditional educational settings?
LIFETIME QUESTIONS How can sustainability education evolve into a lifelong pursuit and remain relevant throughout generational changes? 1. How have pedagogies evolved over time? 2. What educational initiatives would better support lifelong learning? How can lifelong learning become a practical pursuit? 3. How can sustainability education become incorporated within different educational levels and age groups?
DESIGN QUESTIONS What are the roles of systems design within sustainability education, and how can these roles become better investigated? 1. Sustainability education often employs the concept of “interdisciplinary” or “multidisciplinary” study, because environmental systems are vast and complex. Yet an in-depth scientific understanding of these systems requires specialization. How can sustainability education better move to account for these complexities while simultaneously promoting the expertise derived from specialization? Is this a fruitful pursuit? 2. What does it mean to truly and consistently think on different scales? How can this be taught? 3. Are our educational systems so consistently founded on linear, reductionist thinking that true systems design thinking is mostly impossible? 4. Are there new formats for thinking and teaching about the relationships between design and systems analysis?
The Wright窶的ngraham Institute
Expeditionary Learning
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
The Conway School
INSTITUTIONAL MODELS The Wright-Ingraham Institute Frank Miller
The Conway School Paul Cawood Hellmund
In regard to the Wright-Ingraham Institute, Frank Miller highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary systems thinking with precedents from cybernetics, architecture, habitat and integrative studies. “We’re not trying to create specialists; we’re trying to bring specialists together to explore the connections between their disciplines,” he said. Emphasizing “in-field” experience for participants—by placing young people in new situations of direct exposure to the environment—was intended to inspire individuals through an oftentimes-novel level of reflection on consumption and origination. The Field Station aimed to cultivate within students an appreciation of the environment as a dynamic system rather than as a landscape, as well as to instill an overall perspective of learning as an ongoing process of living, and not just a form of preparation for future life.
The Conway School is founded on whole systems thinking, with an educational method that encourages ongoing feedback between students and professors, collaboration over competition, and effective communication through a balance of vocabulary, speaking, and drawing. Sustainability as a key word was not in the founding agenda, but whole systems thinking naturally includes the examination of ecology, balance, and interaction, with a multidisciplinary aspect encouraging collaboration between architecture, ecology, and planning. In order to address complex whole systems in digestible fashion, “ruthless isolation” is practiced. Students isolate one component of a system to learn its pattern, particular size, shape, distribution, and relationships, searching for solutions to aid sustainability at various scales. Consequently, specific subject matter becomes understood both as a thing in and of itself and as part of complex systems. The Conway School focuses on real-world projects with an adaptive and robust system of temporary schools and projects that change locations based on the needs of certain areas.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute Elizabeth Thompson and Sarah Skenazy As posited by Buckminster Fuller, a sustainable world, one that works for 100 percent of humanity, needs to be achieved through “spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” Derived from Buckminster Fuller’s legacy, Executive Director Elizabeth Thompson and Program Director Sarah Skenazy presented The Buckminster Fuller Challenge: A program that presents innovators with a challenge that is broad in description, intended to evoke a curiosity for “conscious design of total environments”; anticipatory design that provides longer-lasting solutions and ideas for sustainability efforts. This challenge requires effective communication that can convey a whole system without being reductive or compartmentalized, while also being communicable across disciplines, people, organizations, and institutions.
Expeditionary Learning Irwin Silverberg Expeditionary Learning exposes students directly to various environments, encouraging and enabling them to develop complex and empirical relationships with these environments. Environmental sensitivity is worked into the curriculum, as the expeditionary experiences naturally evoke recognition of system dynamics, intended to engage current and future students in issues of long-term sustainability. Through this, students can gain a sense of stewardship, empowerment, and appreciation: deep knowledge. These qualities have the potential to encourage sustainable, informed, and empathetic action.
Waterbanks David Turnbull David Turnbull and his partner, Jane Harrison, founded Atopia Research to create a practice in which their clientele could be the air, or the water—something other than a wealthy person. As part of this practice, their project Waterbanks has led to the design and development of schools in Africa. The project rethinks standard school structures, building new structures with flat roofs and built-in rainwater filtration systems that allow for significant rainwater collection during rainy seasons. This reduces deaths caused by contaminated water and enables a systemic change of greater school attendance by young girls who otherwise would be responsible for traveling long distances to retrieve drinking water. Atopia provides design solutions for differing gender needs, such as protective housing for young women. These designs address social issues through architecture and boost sustainability.
THE EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
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Waterbanks
The Conway School
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INSTITUTIONAL MODELS ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Discussion of the institutional models and of the specific infrastructure, and agendas of the presented material ultimately highlighted the importance of creating and understanding networks of connected fields, people, and ideas. Within these networks, each “piece” must be understood in relation to everything surrounding it. Doing so creates a more complete and holistic view of the context of the piece, of its position in the world, and of the piece itself. This requires thinking interactively and promotes an intimate understanding of interconnected systems and how these affiliations can frame each other with certain qualities. Catherine Ingraham raised an important issue regarding the interaction of design disciplines with the sciences. Triggered by the assertion that massive infrastructure has very little regard for ecological systems, she posited that it is crucial to reconcile this, yet the path to doing so is not immediately clear. In response, Turnbull highlighted the significance of maintaining potential within curricula for embodied learning. As Hellmund stated, experience produces new ways of learning and thinking. As a result, Miller noted, teaching methods may not focus explicitly on sustainability, but if they are adapted to dealing with it, they eventually will have that focus. This idea circles back to an emphasis on embodied learning. Ingraham argued that achieving such a focus cannot be accomplished through curricula alone, but rather, this focus must be obtained through affectively linking content, method, intent, and execution within a given educational system. Continuing on this thread of discussion, Elizabeth Thompson emphasized the necessity of educating for capacities: capacities for growth, critical thinking, and new ways of learning. What is needed here are integrative actors: people with a capacity to think. This further calls for education that fosters respect for other disciplines. Turnbull argued that this alone could promote sustainability. With such an emphasis on creativity and progression, sustainability becomes understood as systems in motion. It is not a static ideal that can be achieved through a checklist approach. Thus, there is a huge need for understanding intricate feedback loops, and fundamental and complex cybernetics. Miller noted that understanding complex loops and systems requires a successfully evolving mission. Instead of saying, “This is the way it has to be,” say, “According to our current understanding, this seems to be the way… let’s build in modesty and [through the] process of taking [into account] what we learned, let’s monitor; let’s [continue to] learn; let’s change our way [forward].” According to Michael Ben-Eli, a successfully evolving mission is well suited to take into account all of the pillars of sustainability. He argued that the interaction of these different disciplines and pillars could be viewed as sets of relationships. When these relationships are fully collaborative, nuanced structures can emerge, ultimately promoting an educational paradigm shift.
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The Learning Barge
The Sustainability Laboratory and Global Sustainability Fellows Program
FIELD/PROJECT—BASED PROGRAMS The Sustainability Laboratory and Global Sustainability Fellows Program Michael Ben-Eli and Kathy Chiu Kathy Chiu explained how through her participation in the Global Sustainability Fellows Program, sustainable thinking permeated into the fabric of her personal life, stimulating shifts in her thoughts and behavior. It expanded into her ways of relating with the world and her surrounding environment. She noted that in order for sustainable thinking and behavior to meaningfully augment each other, it is crucial for them to be part of and founded within a cooperative community: a supportive and interactive system of relationships. She said that these cooperative communities exist at very local, personal levels, yet the principle can be expanded to global communities. Multidisciplinary collaboration is necessary to initiate not only sustainable change, but also global collaboration. Michael Ben-Eli firmly argued that the transition to sustainability is a fundamental change with the fundamental requirement to rethink everything. Yet it is essential to understand that there is no textbook method of how to go about this; rather, people need to work together to identify what needs to be accomplished and what needs to be produced in order to achieve sustainability. This requires experimentation, yet also deep immersion in and concentration on the underlying structures of particular issues. Hence the need for The Sustainability Laboratory: a laboratory that allows for experimentation and evolving pedagogies in regards to sustainability as both an ideal and an output; one that does not purport itself to be an established institution in which sustainability is stagnantly addressed. In order to successfully experiment toward change, the given experiments must be understood as part of and as in relation to the histories from which they sprung and the social, economic and political contexts in which they are embedded: as part of an evolutionary flow. This includes emotional understanding to hopefully inspire a connection between heart and mind in regard to environmental awareness. It requires a direct, dynamic, fluid relationship with the issues at hand and the changes they demand.
The Learning Barge Phoebe Crisman The Learning Barge—a traveling, off-the-grid educational field station—tackles sustainability efforts on a local scale. Phoebe Crisman noted that while it is imperative to think globally and to act globally, it is equally crucial to think and act locally, within one’s own community. The Learning Barge uses design to make a positive difference within Crisman’s community in Virginia. The barge serves as a barometer of environmental factors within the Elizabeth River, while also positively influencing the local community, by providing an economical educational resource for residents and surrounding schools. Additionally, the construction of the barge served as an effective form of empowerment for young people to become involved, allowing students to overcome gender stereotypes and to gain a sense of pride in their skills through the process of building. The use of the barge enables students to form relationships with the river, encouraging stewardship. The students become immersed in the ecology of the river and social ecology of their community by learning through doing. Their experience on the barge occurs within an intimate feedback loop of design, care, the environment, and social action.
THE EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
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The Learning Barge
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FIELD/PROJECT—BASED PROGRAMS ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
The most common and prevalent thread throughout these presentations was an emphasis on emotional connection with sustainability. This transports dry systems into relationships that can be translated to cooperative communities. David Turnbull asserted that the key word within this idea is agility. Many of the people already participating in programs oriented around sustainability, such as the Global Sustainability Fellows Program and the Learning Barge, are highly intelligent and capable; they are agile. In order for any progress to be made in educating toward sustainability, there must be connections and collaborations, alliances, between these agile people and their general communities. Yet it is hugely pertinent to notice how relationships programs and people form to change. “Where are we speaking from?” and “Whom are we speaking to?” become questions of central concern and interest, Diana Agrest remarked. We must be aware of and diligent within our relationships and collaborations, in terms of both how they exist and how they change and adapt. Ben-Eli shared his ideas of change in relation to a paradigm shift. He noted that someone can change within the decision rule or they can change the decision rule itself. The latter is crucial to educating toward sustainability and to achieving sustainability. This type of change takes into account the five domains of sustainability: the material domain, which constitutes the basis for regulating the flows of materials and energy that underlie existence; the economic domain, which provides a guiding framework for creating and managing wealth; the domain of life, which supplies the basis for appropriate behavior in the biosphere; the social domain, which provides the basis for social interactions; and the spiritual domain, which identifies the necessary attitudinal, value orientation and provides the basis for a universal code of ethics. Catherine Ingraham raised the issues of language and branding, in relation to making change lasting and meaningful. Buzzwords, such as sustainability, can often become diluted and/or understood differently depending upon the context in which they are consumed and expressed. Thus, a buzzword must be understood not only as a word that has an attached definition, but also as an active force within systems. Words have the power to create change within existing relationships, and they have the power to form new relationships within dynamic systems.
THE EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
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EDUCATION K–X Nature: Architectural Education as an Interdiscoursive Process Diana Agrest The Cooper Union master’s program work on the subject of nature focuses on incorporating various discourses in an organic manner. This can be understood as interdiscoursive rather than interdisciplinary, as use of the latter implies institutionalized boundaries. Within this program, nature becomes the object of study through architectural means, rather than attempting to fit it into preexisting discourses of architecture—thus transcending the boundaries of the discipline of architecture. The program challenges the place of nature in American culture, history, and cities, stressing that the laws and realities of nature need to be understood in order to comprehend their potential in a new way. When this understanding is achieved, new ways of “using” existing systems and forces found within the natural environment can be proposed. Within the program’s studio sessions, there is no separation of theory and analysis. Rather, they exist on a continuum.
The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design Kevin Bone The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design was founded in part upon the notion that educating toward sustainability requires an agenda that promotes proficiency in the earth sciences; ecological literacy; and an understanding of input and output flows, consumption patterns, global and regional economics, and social justice. The institute recognizes that there is great potential in the new generation of students to aid in the promotion of this agenda. However, there is a lack of earth studies within high schools, which is problematic given that a love for the natural world often precipipates involvement in sustainable efforts by young people. Changing educational models to incorporate true sustainability efforts requires a reassessment of all aspects of the human enterprise and landscape. Strengths and limitations of educational institutions need to be understood. This requires goals that can be realized even though they are idealistic. These goals must not be dogmatic, but rather continuously reflect upon the consequences of the actions involved. In order to accommodate an evolving pedagogy, the steps toward these goals must be incremental; we have evolved some and are continuing to evolve.
Sequoia as Gestalt, Nutrition system, Tree Section, Rosannah Sandoval
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Wadi Attir Michael Ben-Eli
ZERI: Zero Emissions Research Initiative Peter Dean
The project Wadi Attir is an effort to create a cooperative operation in Israel for various Bedouin tribes. This cooperation partly hinges on the incorporation of women into the development team, something previously unheard of within the Bedouin community. Through the implementation of sustainable farming methods and the reintroduction of native species, local environments have been transformed. Within nine months fruit trees began growing, insects and small mammals returned, and vegetable crops flourished. Through this work and the educational initiatives surrounding it, the cooperative has come to serve as a social space in which traditional Bedouin gender roles can be inverted and where different social groups can work together for their communal betterment. The cooperative strives to provide effective transformation to its members and visitors.
Peter Dean argued that in order to effectively teach toward sustainability, educators need to be conscious of the process of evolution that educational institutions and initiatives operate in and how this evolution will continue to change: what we are leaning out of and what we are leaning into. In order to effectively reach this understanding requires knowledge of the connections between science, human need, nature, and livelihood; and appreciating and supporting these as constituents of a closing loop. With specific regards to a ZERI project, the process of creating sustenance out of waste— as seen in the example of mushrooms grown in coffee waste— is currently learned predominantly by women and is a critical approach for the future of sustainability. Here, nature itself is the instruction manual, with an emphasis on learning from nature instead of about nature. Nature needs to be not only examined, but also listened to and learned from. Storytelling is a highly effective tool for creating this type of change, as exemplified in ZERI’s fable collection, From Fairy Tales to Reality, that uses storytelling as a way of empowering and encouraging children to engage with science, creativity, emotional intelligence and systems thinking.
Arid Lands Institute Hadley Arnold Throughout the process of establishing and growing the Arid Lands Institute, it has become evident that wrong turns often lead to meaningful endeavors, that assumptions are very powerful, that students can be the primary instigators, and that being fully present is pivotal so as to get institutionalized preoccupations out of the way. This requires looking at issues globally, nationally, and locally. It demands quality storytelling and conscious decisions about which stories need to be told. “Really in this time, just as in any other time, there’s only good work, compelling stories, and defining our own relationship to concepts of provision, mutuality, and sufficiency,” Arnold aptly stated. The capacity for inquisitiveness is essential in environmental education. This inquisitiveness can be evoked by letting natural systems “do the talking,” removing the constraints of “architecture” and “the classroom” in learning environments. Reaching the capacity for inquisitiveness also requires collaboration between architecture and public policy and science to make change that works.
THE EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
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Wadi Attir
ZERI
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EDUCATION K–X ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
As part of the discussion on education, cybernetics and relationships, the third roundtable discussion naturally evolved to speak of the connections that bind these systems and networks. David Turnbull emphasized the idea of the arrow as a connector and its significance in informing feedback loops. How one uses an arrow to connect ideas, issues or techniques communicates information about the ideas, issues and techniques themselves and the contexts they are located within. How one draws the arrow— how big the arrowhead is, how long the tail is—matters. How direct the line is matters; whether it’s a curve or a straight line makes a difference. Yet the ambiguity of these arrows was also noted. Catherine Ingraham expressed her dislike of the arrow analysis, as arrows are simply a tool and a representation of complex data and relations. She described arrows as very simple instruments that are extremely good at hiding massive amounts of problems and data. As such, the arrow is just not rational in shape, but what it contains in its sort of demarcations is really important. Once again, the use and various understandings of language are pivotal. Language must be used as a tool for stimulating awareness and cultivating a new generation of understanding and action. According to Frank Miller, this new generation must become intergenerational: leapfrogging on ideas of the past to promote new ways of thinking. Turnbull likened this concept of leapfrogging to the ebb and flow of institutions themselves. He noted that institutions sometimes die, but often they just go down and then a year or two later come back up. They are fluid in relation to their capacity to influence disciplinary practices and thoughts. One can think of institutions as part of ecology: natural systems with fluctuations. If sustainability is to support, maintain, and harmonize with nature, then society must recognize and celebrate its inherent role within the natural world. We have to reconceptualize the way we think of technology, our models, our systems, our relationships, our actions, and our institutions. This itself is a paradigm shift and speaks to a conflation of teaching toward sustainability and educating in a sustainable way. This generational shift will come from the stories that are told by and about previous generations. As Diana Agrest aptly noted, the use of the word interdiscoursive is of utmost relevance. These discussions must be fluid; they must be able to transcend the limitations arranged around disciplinary thinking. In order to proficiently educate toward sustainability, flexibility and storytelling must take center stage.
THE EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
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Arid Lands Institute
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The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design
CONCLUSIONS
The work of each of the programs and participants present during the Educators’ Workshop, and of countless others, is ultimately geared toward a fundamental paradigm shift in the incorporation of systems thinking and sustainability in not only design education, but education as a whole. In order to instigate this shift, new enterprises of learning, teaching methods, and other considerations must be explored. As discussed by most all participants of the workshop, incorporating “in-field” experiential and embodied learning is key in this shift in order to spark curiosity about and appreciation of the natural world. Doing so encourages learning as whole: with the whole body (not just the intellect), as part of the whole planet’s ecosystem, within the whole educational system and beyond. When cultivated, curiosity among young people can have the powerful effect of inspiring thought and action toward various scales of sustainability efforts for future generations. Empowerment was consistently mentioned as an effective method of initiating and inspiring this stewardship and level of connection with, and passion for, the environment. These attributes support learning as an ongoing process of living. Successful cultivation of qualities and situations that engage people and children in progressive environmental dialogue and, more importantly, action, calls for new understandings of educational systems, institutional models, and their roles in society. As part of this, educators must be aware of student-teacher dynamics and the tools and apparatuses used in the negotiation of these relationships. In addition, the collaboration between institutions and policy must be considered. In regard to pedagogy and institutional interaction, we must be diligent in using language effectively. We must strive to have focused yet inclusive meanings embedded within the language we employ. We must recognize how words associated with sustainability—sustainability included—are culturally understood and implemented in discussion. Being aware of issues of branding aids this goal. To educate proficiently toward sustainability, educators and students alike need to be conscious of how the words they are digesting, using, and exporting register within preexisting systems and how they change these systems. This includes engaging with change itself and the differences in types of change.
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Global and multidisciplinary collaboration on sustainability is heavily dependent upon communication skills. It is important to strike a balance in terms of methods of communication within educational models: clear communication through drawing, action, use of vocabulary and speaking within design school settings works toward a more effective communication across disciplines, with the public, and globally. As Diana Agrest highlighted, the use of the term interdiscoursive is illuminating, because it opens the door to countless interwoven dialogues that extend beyond preexisting institutional boundaries. Sarah Skenazy posed the pertinent questions: “How can we more efficiently communicate what this work looks like…. How do you convey a whole system, sustainable solution without reducing it simply to the components and the siloed parts? Can we develop a common language amongst other organizations, individuals, and institutions?” While conclusions can be drawn from these discussions, it is pivotal to remember that these conclusions are part of continuous narratives. Self-reflection, critical thinking, and creativity will be imperative to moving these discussions forward in the hopes of inspiring mindful and engaged action. We must seek questions, not simply answers. We must not underestimate the power of inquisitiveness, as Phoebe Crisman observed. David Turnbull likened this continuous evolution to flamingos taking off in flight. “They flash around. It’s a mess, actually. There is water flying everywhere. There are wings; there are beaks pointing in different directions, eyes that don’t know where they are supposed to be looking, and they struggle to get their feet out of the water. Once their feet are out of the water, they are above the water, and as a collective, they are all flying in different directions. They bump into each other and they do all sorts of things… And as they get slightly higher and further away from the water, the flamingos start to fly—not quite in formation, but they are flying more or less in the same direction, and ultimately they all… fly in formation or shape. It’s not a military shape but it is a shape…. My sense of the conversation in the last two days is that… we are out of the water, certainly out of the mud, [but] not in the beautiful shape…. There is this really fascinating intermediate stage that is a combination of urgency, agency, action, and time.”
THE EDUCATORS’ WORKSHOP TEACHING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY
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Sonoma County Geyser Field, M.Arch II, Advanced Design Research Studio, Spring 2015
The Wright窶的ngraham Institute
PARTICIPANT BIOS Catherine Ingraham
Irwin Silverberg
Catherine Ingraham is a professor of architecture, theorist, and writer who has helped formulate seminal debates in architecture over the past twenty years. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Ingraham was an editor of Assemblage journal from 1991 to 1998 and has published over eighty essays on contemporary architecture and theory. Ingraham was chair of the Graduate Architecture department at Pratt Institute from 1998 to 2006 and continues as a professor of architecture in the graduate program. She has lectured extensively at national and international schools of architecture and taught as a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia University.
Irwin Silverberg is the managing director at Concept Capital Management. He graduated from Princeton University in 1958 with a bachelor of science degree in Chemical Engineering. Silverberg served in the US Army as a second lieutenant, and worked as a chemical engineer for three years and in the investment business for fifty-four years. He was a board member for Outward Bound USA from 1995 to 2007. He has served as board member for Expeditionary Learning from 2007 to the present and the Petey Greene Program from 2013 to the present.
Frank Miller Frank Miller apprenticed to both Elizabeth Ingraham at the Wright-Ingraham Institute and Paolo Soleri at Arcosanti. He holds two MIT degrees and is a registered architect with a focus on design-build. For ten years he was a member of the design faculty at MIT, where he taught design and conducted research on the impact of technology on design methods. Miller was the architectural team member on a multiyear archaeological excavation in Carthage, Tunisia, researching fourth- and fifth-century Roman art and urbanism. Miller lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin, and owns an eightyacre organic farm in Southern California.
Elizabeth Thompson Elizabeth Thompson is the executive director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, a legacy-based educational nonprofit organization in Brooklyn, New York. Since 2004 Thompson has led the institute through the development of a number of formal and informal education initiatives, including exhibitions, the Design Science Lab (2005–8), and the launch in 2007 of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, now recognized as socially responsible design’s highest award.
Sarah Skenazy Sarah Skenazy joined the Buckminster Fuller Institute as a research and program fellow for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, serving as a researcher and evaluator on the Challenge review team. A staff member from 2013-15, Skenazy lead the expansion and implementation of several initiatives of the institute, including the Challenge Program, the associated Catalyst Program, and related symposia, events, and educational webinars.
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Paul Cawood Hellmund Ecological designer Paul Cawood Hellmund was president and professor of design and planning at the Conway School since from 2005-15. He formerly taught at Colorado State University, Virginia Tech, and Harvard University, and was principal of Hellmund Associates. He has worked at Design Workshop, HOH Associates, and the US National Park Service. Born and raised in Panama, he received the master of landscape architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
David Turnbull David Turnbull is a director of Atopia Innovation and design director of Atopia Research Inc. d/b/a PitchAfrica, an awardwinning 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization registered in New Jersey, with a specific focus on the development and construction of building types that address global ecological and social challenges. Turnbull attended the Architectural Association in London while working in the office of James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates, leading major projects in Spain, Japan, and Singapore. He has been a professor of architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art since 2007, and he is currently a visiting professor in architecture, specializing in site and sustainability, at Cornell University.
Michael Ben-Eli
Kevin Bone
Michael Ben-Eli is the founder of the Sustainability Laboratory and is the author of the acclaimed Five Core Sustainability Principles. He is leading the development of the Sustainability Laboratory as a worldwide network of advanced research, development, and education centers. Dr. Ben-Eli graduated from the Architectural Association in London and later received a PhD from the Institute of Cybernetics at Brunel University, where he studied under Gordon Pask.
Since 1985 Kevin Bone has been a professor of architecture at The Cooper Union, where he teaches design (at various levels) and advanced concepts in sustainability. Bone has organized numerous public exhibitions about architecture, engineering, infrastructure, and history, and organized and participated in lectures and panel discussions on issues of environment, resources, and design. Bone and co-principal Joseph Levine share a practice that has pursued a mix of contemporary architectural design, technical consulting, and historic preservation for over twenty-five years.
Kathy Chiu Kathy Chiu is a young professional from New York City passionate about sustainability and health. Chiu has initiated and implemented clean water projects for communities in Honduras and Nicaragua and is an aspiring herbalist who aims to help individuals make healthier lifestyle choices by incorporating fitness and herbs.
Phoebe Crisman Phoebe Crisman is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Virginia, where she teaches design studio; lectures on sustainability, architecture theory, and urbanism; and directs the Global Sustainability Initiative. She led an interdisciplinary collaboration of UVA students to design and build the Learning Barge: a traveling, off-the-grid educational field station. Educated at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Carnegie Mellon, she is a licensed architect in practice with Crisman+Petrus Architects. Crisman is a fellow of the Institute for Practical Ethics & Public Life and serves on the AASHE Advisory Council and AIA Virginia Board of Directors.
Diana Agrest
Hadley Arnold Hadley Arnold is cofounder and executive director of the Arid Lands Institute, a research, education, and outreach center of Woodbury University. Hadley’s work focuses on bringing water scarcity and climate adaptation to the forefront of design education, practice, and policy in drylands. In the classroom, Hadley’s work focuses on hydrologic urbanism. Hadley received her AB from Harvard and her M.Arch from SCI-Arc.
Peter Dean Peter Dean has a BFA in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA from the Boston University Program in Artisanry. He has been a furniture designer/ craftsman for thirty-five years, designing and building custom one-of-a-kind and limited-edition pieces for the corporate and residential markets. His furniture pieces are held in numerous museums and private collections. Dean has completed many residential architectural projects as well as several product design commissions.
Diana Agrest is an internationally renowned architect well known for her unique approach to architectural and urban design practice and theory. She is a founder and principal of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects in New York City. Many of her designs have emphasized sustainable capacities and promote green environments. Agrest is a professor of architecture at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union where she has created and developed since 2008-2009 the studio Architecture of Nature/Nature of Architecture, first in the Undergraduate Design IV studio and then within the Advanced Research Studio of the M.Arch II Program since its beginning in 2009. She has taught at Princeton, Columbia, and Yale Universities. Her work and writings have been published extensively, in her own books and included in books, encyclopedias and journals globally.
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PROGRAMS AND INSTITUTES The Wright-Ingraham Institute
Waterbanks
The Wright-Ingraham Institute is a private, nonprofit education and research institution founded in Colorado in 1970 that has since relocated to be based out of Brooklyn, New York. It focuses on research and education that concerns interrelationships between natural and human-built systems. In keeping with this mission, the institute organizes educational programs and coordinates with other nonprofit institutions to develop workshops, conferences, and public forums.
“Waterbanks” is an approach to managing access to water in rural Africa that foregrounds education and community engagement around sustainable practices and the cultivation of sustainable livelihoods. Waterbanks’ philosophy supports a decentralized approach to water supply in regions where population is at such low densities that it is unrealistic and expensive to have centralized piped water supplies.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute Fuller Challenge
The Sustainability Laboratory and The Global Sustainability Fellows Program
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is committed to continued research into the practice and fundamental principles of comprehensive anticipatory design science and its relevance to contemporary global issues and design practice. Each year, The Buckminster Fuller Institute invites scientists, students, designers, architects, activists, entrepreneurs, artists and planners from all over the world to submit their innovative solutions to some of humanity’s most pressing problems. The challenge is deemed, “socially-responsible design’s highest award”.
The Global Sustainability Fellows Program is a graduate-level learning experience designed to inspire, mobilize, and prepare future generations of leaders in all sectors of society who are committed to integrating sustainability concerns into their approach to their chosen disciplines. The program offers integrative studies in a project-based curriculum, drawing from a wide range of disciplines and cultural sources. By synthesizing curriculum in the fields of sustainability, development, and systems thinking, the program imparts the core competencies required to effectively tackle urgent sustainability challenges on a local, regional, and planetary scale.
Expeditionary Learning
The Learning Barge
Expeditionary Learning partners with schools, districts, charter management organizations, and states to build teacher capacity in service of a more ambitious vision of student achievement: one that joins academic challenge and scholarship to skills like perseverance, critical thinking, and an ethic of contribution to prepare students for success in college, career, and citizenship.
The Learning Barge initiative is a successful example of integrating community partners and professionals into the academy in order to create an environmentally conscientious built project with positive, wide-reaching social and educational implications. The barge provides interactive K–12 and adult educational programs that explore the complex relationship between human life and river ecology. The Learning Barge initiative represents the future of architecture, which will involve greater synthesis with environment and ecology achieved through intertwined phases of research and design, and an integrated way of working across scales, from watershed to district to detailed architecture.
The Conway School of Landscape Design: MS in Ecological Design The mission of the Conway School is to explore, develop, practice, and teach design that is ecologically and socially sustainable. The program puts particular emphasis on communication skills and community building. Students work on real projects with real clients at varying scales, from residential landscaping to urban planning and management of entire watersheds.
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Nature: Architectural Education as an Interdiscoursive Process As the lead Design professor in the M.Arch II Program at The Cooper Union, Diana Agrest has created and developed an approach that focuses on the topic of nature from the philosophical and scientific discourses that have explained it throughout history, to the present conditions of the natural world as they affect our modes of habitation. The subject of nature in its many complex modes of interaction with architecture—scientific, philosophical, economic, political, ideological—is critically reexamined through a process of “reading and rewriting,” focusing on various spatial and temporal scales ranging from the national to the regional and the local and throughout time. Through this exploration, potential sources, potential sites, potential elements, and potential new architectural concepts are discovered and proposals are put forth. Traditional concepts such as site; land use; materiality; and ecology and energy are critically reassessed.
The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design seeks to provide the greater Cooper Union community—architects, engineers, and artists—with the cross-disciplinary knowledge and skills that are necessary for creating a sustainable society. It defines a “sustainable society” as one that prospers because its economy, social practices, physical infrastructure, and engineering systems all work in harmony with the ecological dynamics and resource limitations of the earth.
Arid Lands Institute The Arid Lands Institute’s (ALI) mission is to train designers and citizens to innovate in response to hydrologic variability brought on by climate change. ALI’s vision is a water-smart built environment in the US West serving as a model for drylands globally. ALI provides an open, lab-like platform for collaborators from multiple universities, serving as a resource for the academic, public, and private sectors. Critical thinking; design excellence for the public good; and hospitality to diversity, including a rich web of collaborative partnerships that reach across cultures, generations, and sectors, are central to ALI’s programs and operations.
ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives) and the Marion Institute ZERI Learning Initiative, a project of the Marion Institute, calls for innovation in what we teach—and the way we teach it. Focusing on child education, their initiative “From Fairy Tales to Reality” offers the chance to familiarize oneself with science, to develop emotional intelligence, to value and nurture imagination, to ignite artistic vision, to uncover and understand the hidden connections among disparate phenomena, and to strengthen the capacity to implement innovative ideas and projects. The Marion Institute is a nonprofit that acts as an incubator for a diverse array of programs and serendipity projects that seek to find a solution to the root cause of an issue, in the realms of sustainability and social justice. The three tenets that weave their work together are accessibility, diversity, and root-cause solutions.
Wadi Attir The Wadi Attir field model is focused upon agricultural and cultural restoration in the Negev desert. The project works with Bedouin communities to restore depleted soils and rangelands using a systems-based approach that includes economics, community building, energy, water, political concerns, traditional agricultural methods, and new technology. Initiated by The Sustainability Laboratory, a US-based non-profit, and the Hura Municipal Council, the governing body of a local Bedouin township, the project showcases implementation of holistic sustainability principles developed by The Lab.
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