A BUILDING CAN BE A TEACHER

David Orr, head of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College,
understands that young people learn from everything they do and everything
around them.  Even buildings.

So he started thinking about the structure in which he conducts his classes. 
"It is a building with lots of squareness and straight lines," he wrote in a
recent article in the journal Conservation Biology.  "How it is cooled, heated,
and lighted and at what cost to the world is an utter mystery to its occupants.
 
It offers no clue about the origins of the materials used to build it."

The building flatly contradicts the lessons Orr is trying to get across. 
"First, it tells its users that locality is unimportant.  There is nothing
whatsoever that reflects its place in northeast Ohio in what had once been a
vast forested wetland."

"Second, because it uses energy wastefully, the building tells its users that
energy is cheap and abundant and can be squandered with no thought for the
morrow."

"Third, nowhere do students learn about the materials used in its construction
or who was downwind or downstream from the wells, mines, forests, and
manufacturing facilities where those materials originated or where they
eventually will be discarded."

"The lesson learned is mindlessness," Orr concludes.  "Try as one might to
teach that we are implicated in the larger enterprise of life, standard
architectural design mostly conveys other lessons.  There is no apparent
connection in this or any other building on campus to the larger set of issues
having to do with climate change, biotic impoverishment, and the unraveling of
the fabric of life on Earth.  Students begin to suspect that those issues are
unreal, or that they are unsolvable in any practical way, or that they occur
somewhere else."

David Orr decided that he wanted to teach in a building that did not undo his
curriculum.  Being a great teacher, he involved his students in the quest.  In
1992 he organized a class to plan a new environmental studies center at
Oberlin.  The students worked with a dozen architects, visited all kinds of
buildings, read the literature, considered retrofitting an old building, and
finally drew up design criteria for a new one.

They are tough criteria.  The building has to:

- discharge wastewater at least as pure as the water it takes in.

- generate more electricity than it uses.

- incorporate no material known to cause cancer, birth defects, hormone
disruption, or other hazards.

- use energy and materials with great efficiency.

- use products and materials grown or manufactured sustainably.

- be surrounded with landscape that promotes biological diversity.

- meet rigorous requirements for full-cost accounting.

No ugliness, the students said, human or ecological, somewhere else or at some
future time.

You can imagine what a college administration would think of such a plan.  The
students clearly learned a lot, but colleges do not take their marching orders
from what happens in classes.  

Then Oberlin got a new president.  Orr, students, and architects did some
inspiring presentations, and finally they were given permission to go forward,
under some almost impossible conditions.  They must complete the design and
permitting within two years.  They must raise all the money from donors with no
previous connection to Oberlin.

They did it.  Orr turned the process into even more learning.

Some 250 students, faculty and townspeople participated in 13 brainstorming
sessions.  A committee, which included students, sifted through applications
from 26 architects.  They put together a team of the nation's best green
designers, including architect William McDonough, energy consultants Amory
Lovins and Bill Browning, and wastewater experts John Todd and Michael Shaw. 
Ground will be broken this coming spring.

The roof will be covered by a new kind of photovoltaic panel, which does not
use toxic metals and which will power the building and feed electricity into
the grid.

Sewage and other wastewater will flow through a "living machine," a
greenhouse-covered, slow-moving river full of bacteria, algae, snails, fish,
and all sorts of plants, which will purify the water just as a living stream
does.

The super-efficient windows will block heat loss as if they were well-insulated
walls.  Even north-facing windows will bring in a net gain of radiated heat on
sunny winter days.

Around the building will be a restored wetland and forest, gardens and
orchards.  In the entrance hall will be data panels, displaying the building's
energy use, water use, and emissions of greenhouse gases.

The generation of students who were lucky enough to be around during the design
of this building will never forget it.  Generations to come will never stop
learning from it.

(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College.)

Kulonos tekintettel figyelmetekbe ajanlom az  alabbi kiirasbol a 
Kornyezettudomanyi Magiszteri (MSc) fokozatot.  A tanszekunkrol es a 
programunkrol bovebb informacio az interneten (www.ceu.hu), vagy az 
 emailen, vagy a 327-3021-es telefonszamon Szabados 
Krisztinatol (vagy akar be is lehet, sot, erdemes,  ide setafikalni a 
Nador utcaba korulszaglaszni). Kulonoskeppen orulnenk energiaval 
foglalkozo erdeklodoknek; de barmilyen relevans hatterrel 
rendelkezoknek is, termeszetesen.   Altalanos kerdesekkel kerlek ne 
engem keressetek, hacsak nem valami konkret hozzam szolo kerdesetek 
van a programunkkal, tanszekunkkel, vagy kutatasi teruleteinkkel 
kapcsolatban.

Varjuk jelentkezeseiteket,
Prof. Urge-Vorsatz Diana


 NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR FELLOWSHIPS

CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY is now accepting applications for
fellowships for the 1998/99 academic year  (for students from Central
and Eastern Europe,  the former Soviet Union and Central Asia).
Additional financial aid is available for students from other
countries.

Central European University is an internationally recognized
institution of post-graduate education in the social sciences which
seeks to contribute to the development of open societies in Central
and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (CEE/FSU). CEU is based
in Budapest, Hungary, with the exception of the Department of
Sociology which is located in Warsaw, Poland.  Currently over 
600 students are enrolled from over 35 countries, including those of 
CEE/FSU, Western Europe, North America and Asia.  Over 60 professors 
teach at the university, originating from about 30 countires around 
the world.  Visiting lecturers include professors from UC Berkeley, 
UCLA, Cambridge, Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, the London School of 
Economics, Manchester, Oxford, Rutgers and Yale.


MASTERS' AND/OR PHD PROGRAMS: Economics (MA), Environmental Sciences
and Policy (MSc), History (MA, PhD), International Relations and
European Studies (MA), Legal Studies (MA, SJD), Medieval Studies (MA,
PhD), Political Science (MA, PhD*), Sociology (MA, PhD).

INTERDISCIPLINARY MASTER'S PROGRAMS: Gender Studies (MA, MPhil), Human
Rights (MA*, MPhil), Nationalism Studies (MA*, MPhil), Social Theory
(certificate) and Southeast European Studies (MA, MPhil). 

DOCTORAL SUPPORT PROGRAMS: Complex Adaptive Systems, Gender & Culture,
Nationalism Studies, Philosophy. The Human Rights program offers a
short-term track for working professionals.

For additional information and application materials, please contact:
CEU Admissions Office, Nador u 9, 1051 Budapest, HUNGRY Tel: (36-1)
327-3009, Fax: (36-1) 327-3211 Email: , Web-site:
http://www.ceu.hu



@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Dr. Urge-Vorsatz Diana
Professor of Energy Policy
Dept. of Environmental Sciences and Policy
CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY
H-1051 Budapest
Nador u. 9
Ph:  (36-1) 327-3095
     or     327-3021
Fax: (36-1) 327-3031