Green School Competition

     In my last posting I mentioned that while attending the CA Green Schools summit I was introduced to the School of the Future Design Competition.  The contest, sponsored by Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI) was developed for middle school students “to illustrate the kind of creativity that students bring to the planning and design process. The competition highlights the importance of well-planned, high performance, healthy, safe and sustainable schools that foster student achievement and enhance community vitality”.
     The winners of last year’s competition were students from the Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School. The team used Autodesk Revit to design a school that incorporates four major renewable energy sources such as; Solar, Hydro, Geothermal and Wind powered systems.  Recycling, composting and rooftop gardens were also in the design. Autodesk created a posting about this team that you may want to check out. I’d encourage middle school teachers to check out the competition guidelines; an extensive curriculum in PDF format is available. If you do consider entering a team, I’d suggest that a great introduction to the project can be the PBS DVD series E2 design –“The Economies of Being Environmentally Conscious”. The series, with funding from Autodesk, provides a number of  real world case studies that demonstrate, from large to small scale, how design can play a vital role in reversing our global climate crisis.  You may also want to checkout another DVD title the “11th Hour”   which like an Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, helps define the environmental problems that our students have inherited.  Offering students a solid background regarding the magnitude of the environmental crisis can help set the stage for their design efforts.