LINDSAY HUMBER, 08 APR 2010

In my last post, I suggested that "we need to actively educate individuals, world citizens, who can think critically, creatively and collaboratively about real world problems instead of focusing on grades and fragmented specializations". But how can we do this in environments that exhibit a fragmented view of the relationship between the environment, technology and humans, while simultaneously justifying inherently unsustainable practices??

The buildings in which we are educated are as much a part of our education as the lectures and lessons that take place within them. The spaces we create speak volumes about our cultural, social, economic, physical ideas of life and the environment. It is my belief that the ideas and ethics of a community are reflected in the environments that they construct and the buildings that they erect.

Delft University of Technology Library, Netherlands. This innovative library hosts a green roof in the form of a lawn as a recreational area. Image ©2008 the Shifted Librarian

I am a student. Sometimes I think I was born a student, and will never be anything else. As an individual who has dedicated a disproportionate amount of her life to formal education, I continue to find myself frustrated with the academic systems and spaces in which I have been educated. I have found it difficult to reconcile classroom theories of environmental ethics with the uninspiring reality of learning inside buildings devoid of any ecological conscience or relationship to any larger pedagogical intent. It seems counterintuitive that an academic community concerned with understanding and examining the relationships between people and the natural environment is, for the large part, educated in buildings that do not mirror any sort of ecological awareness and actually exhibit the qualities most lectured against. And not only do the spaces that we exist in exhibit anti-environmental qualities, they do not foster any sort of emotional attachment, or qualitative understanding of 'place'. They are simply classrooms that we pass through, and vacate as soon as the professor ceases to lecture.

California Academy of Sciences, the Osher Living Roof: This recently completed LEED Platinum natural history museum has a 2.5acre undulating green roof planted with native species in the heart of San Franscisco's Golden Gate Park. Advertised as the world's greenest museum, it also houses an aquarium, a planetarium, a rainforest, and a multitude of other facilities. Image ©2010 California Academy of Sciences

Fostering a connection to academic places is an important aspect of the learning process as it facilitates a sense of responsibility for what happens within those walls, while encouraging students to be active participants and designers in their own educational pursuits. When you feel as though you belong to, or are emotionally invested in a place, you become more concerned with what happens to it. You become fundamentally and inextricably tied up with the destiny of that specific location. In the same way, once people become tied to a specific landscape or natural feature, they become compelled to both conserve and protect that landscape from degradation or negative change. It follows that children and youth who are encouraged to think critically about the impact of unsustainable practices on the environment will be more adept at linking the phenomenon later on as they mature into adults.

Healthy socio-ecosystems "are self-maintaining places where human and natural communities coexist in rooted, mutually sustaining relationships" (M'Gonigle & Starke 2006, p.120). Striving for sustainability then, is just as much a social as it is an ecological exercise. And in turn, increasing ecological citizenship does not only protect natural resources but also enhances a community's social capital. While this is a concept that I struggle to articulate, it is something that I have been continually re-visiting: the concept of people as place, and place as people. I feel that people, both as individuals and as a community, are profoundly influenced by their natural and social environments (their places); therefore, it seems only natural to me that academic buildings be designed so that they reflect some sort of ecological conscience and human personality.

Our assumptions about the environment directly influence how we plan our working, playing, living and public spaces. And in turn, our ideas of "place" completely influence our perceptions of ourselves as social, physical and individual beings. Our physical surroundings, then, have as much influence over us as we do over them. So, if the ideas and ethics of a community are reflected in the environments that they construct and the buildings that they erect, what do our constructed environments say about us? North Americans spend 90% of our time indoors! We work, play, live, and learn in environments that are not sustainable, suggesting that we are entertaining a way of life that is ecologically irresponsible and is increasingly socially as well as financially bankrupt. Environments that do not foster a connection to place do not serve to responsibly educate students but instead highlight the dichotomies between environment and industry, moral and amoral, conservation and exploitation, human and nature that underlie our society. As stated in my last post; "what needs to be drawn out is our affinity for life" (David Orr 2004, p.212), not our ability to rationalize ecologically damaging practices as demonstrated in the environments that we build.

Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, Oberlin College.  This center "was conceived as a demonstration project, testing ground, educational venue, and catalyst for the emerging field of ecological design. It was designed to be a building that would teach, providing endless research opportunities for students and faculty in multiple disciplines." AJLC Image ©2007 T.Jones

By highlighting the fundamental connection between human actions and natural systems, it is important to create educational spaces that emphasize conservationist values towards the natural world, conscience over efficiency, nature over industry, and questions instead of neat answers (check out the Adam Joseph Lewis Center). Maybe this belief is the by-product of my socializing with too many architects but I truly believe that in creating physical and pedagogical educational spaces that achieve a synthesis between the natural and built environments it is possible to actively influence the way the people within those spaces perceive their roles in the world as environmentally conscious individuals.

"To live in an environment which has to be endured or ignored rather than enjoyed is to be diminished as a human being". S. Gauldie (1969)