DESIGNMIND: NEWSCHOOL IS “GREEN. BY DESIGN

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DESIGNMIND NEWSCHOOL IS GREEN. BY DESIGN.
Sustainability is one of the pillars of our
curriculum. We teach our students, especially
those in the design and architecture, and masters
in construction management online, that
everything they design, from clothing to
furniture to buildings, as well as how those
buildings are constructed, must make efficient
use of resources. Sustainability is a
fundamental and essential aspect of practice,
another pillar of our curriculum.
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Great designers are acutely aware of resources.
It affects every aspect of their lives Its the
coffee cup they use, the car they drive, the
structures they design, and how they respect the
environment and the people who live and work and
worship there. I often tell students that design
isnt something you stop and start in your life.
Design is your life. Sustainability has to join
that circle of who you are. When you think about
where we live and the resources we have, we are
at a moment in time when we have to learn to use
these resources in a much better way. Our new
School Green. By Design. initiative challenges
us to be sustainable across the board. It
reminds us to ask ourselves, Do I really need to
print this out? Is this the best way to commute
to campus? Can someone else in the Materials Lab
use the scrap from my project? Should the
structure Im designing have a building envelope
that will require less energy? Green. By
Design. is also a reminder that great things
happen when we partner with our students. The
idea and the drive behind it come from the
collaboration between our Student Life office
and our Student Council. They identified this way
to connect our mission to our daily campus
routines. One of our first actions will be to
eliminate disposable cups by giving students
bottles and mugs they can reuse. This may seem
like a small effort, but we use 60,000 cups a
yearenough to encircle our building 19 times!