I'll be acting as a moderator for a panel discussion on Green Building. The whole event promises to be interesting as there are a number of great speakers and participants. Seems like an excellent opportunity to be involved and to meet people who are working in and on corporate sustainability
On Monday November 1st, at the at the EQuilibrium™ Housing Forum — True Stories: Sustainability in Action - I've been granted the opportunity to present the the Integrated Design Process for the Abondance, Le Soleil project. I'll be introducing the concept of a design charrette and it's role in the implementation of a systemic, facilitated integrated design process. The conference presents to people in the larger building community the successes and challenges of the development of three net zero home building projects in the province of Quebec.
The fundamental importance of the integrated design process was one of my personal take-away lessons form having participated in the development of the Abondance Montreal project. Not only were we able to understand the project from a variety of perspectives and work out complex design issues as a group - but when challenges arose (and they always do in construction projects), the sense of collective ownership and commitment to the team that was developed through the collaborative design and development process was invaluable in over coming challenges. It's a civil and incredibly democratic way to work.
If you weren't aware there are these advanced homes in the province - you can actually visit the projects to learn more about them. Visiting these sites provide an excellent opportunity to witness the culmination of many years work the teams involved.
In February, I was fortunate enough to act as the facilitator for a green building charette at École Polytechnique de Montréal. Clearly the students got busy shortly thereafter - because by the end of the semester, they had a completed building on their campus. Defying at least part of the cardinal law of real estate development - thou shall double your budget and timeline in half the time planned - they put this little gem together in no time (e.g. about two months from our meeting in February). No word on the budget - but there appear to be many sponsors for the whole project, so I hope that means this little project won't be haunting departmental budgetary meetings for too long.
The challenge was to design, develop and build a booth for a parking lot attendant that a) does not have to be connected to an energy grid; b) must be thermally comfortable for the occupant; c) while not occupied the internal temperature must stay between 0 and 40°C; and all while being d) collapsible and transportable. No small feat, for a little building.
What they developed is called S.P.A.R.K. - or Solar Powered Autonomous Renewable Energy Kabin - if you want to get all technical. Engineering students and their clever branding! As you can see from the picture, the booth is powered by three 210w Kyocera solar panels, which have been paired with 6 batteries, to allow for energy storage. The wee building will produce 645 kWh annual and is able to store 8.3 kWh.
The students investigated three separate envelop designs and compared their cycle of life impacts on the environment, before choosing to compose the walls of RoxulR22, Enermax pannels and MDF, the ceiling of Pare-air Tyvek, Celfort 300, MDF, and the floor of fibre cement board. The generous fenestration is triple glazed, and allows for substantial solar gains.
What an awesome project! Congrats to Prof. Bernier for offering his students this practical learning experience and here is hoping they have many green buildings in their futures.
Today was one of those days - a day when the fortuitous coming together of a number of key factors reveals something which would, from that day forward, forever appear incredibly obvious to you. The factors in question were 1) fatigue, 2) motivation theory, and 3) a student led dialogue session.
I like having the freedom to allow my students to walk around the class, like it's theirs. I like having them lead a good portion of the class, like it's theirs. I like to imagine that this motivates them to learn more, to retain more, to consider the sometimes challenging topics that we cover in that particular class. Sometimes they might not learn exactly what I was hoping they would, but sometimes they learn something much deeper. I always learn something, even if it's just that it's okay to let go and let someone else, someone less "experienced" be in charge.
Every week in my Social Context of Business class, a group of students develop and implement some kind of class activity to help their colleagues better understand the topic of that week - be it ethics, or consumerism etc. This forces the group in question to develop a solid understanding of the topic at hand, in addition to creating some interesting ways of sharing this information with the class. Examples of such exercises include scavenger hunts, the development of barter systems, quiz shows, dialogue sessions, and puzzles. Fun is often a key element of this half of the class.This week they had their peers experience a controversial topic from multiple perspective - I feel it was a highly effective exercise.
It's not like this in all my classes. In some of the coordinated classes I teach, there seems to be a pressure to teach the topics from a given text, in a given fashion. Perhaps as a result, I feel a little less passionately about teaching those topics - I leave the class less inspired. It only just now occurred to me why, precisely, I cannot and will not continue in this vein.
This morning, in one such coordinated class I lectured on the topic of intrinsic motivation. I did this by standing in front of the class and talking about it. "More autonomy, more responsibility etc.... lead to better outcomes," I explained. This I explained by standing in front of class, using examples, real and fabricated to illuminate the topic. I can't imagine a less original way to cover a topic that relate to something as interesting as what drives people. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that, given the power dynamic between student and professor, every class presents the opportunity to put this concept into practice - to give these bright, curious people a chance to develop ways to improve their own learning.
This realization made me understand why the structure of my "Social Context" class seems to be so effective in bringing students together around complex ideas. It's because they do it themselves - it's not imposed on them. I trust them as bright and original thinkers to come up with a variety of solutions to the challenge of real education. At it's root, part of the reason I implemented this structure to this particular course in the first place was because I too was entrusted with more autonomy in the creation of the course. The course coordinator has given me the freedom to cover the topics that I feel most relevant to the subject, in the ways that I feel most effective. I feel this freedom has challenged me to become a better educator, and the freedom I grant my students seems to encourage them to be better learners. It's like a motivational cyclone - kind of out of control, but powerful nonetheless.
Today I was privileged enough to participate as a facilitator in a green building design charette at École Polytechnique de Montréal. The charrette was called by Professor Micheal Bernier in order to expose his students to the concept of a design charrette and to allow them to interact with industry experts. The fundamental goal of the day was to refine the design of an off-grid parking attendant booth, which will be constructed by the students prior to the end of the semester. Such a conceptually simple building, so much learning to be had.
Students struggled with balancing the degree to which the building would be insulated, in order to reduce energy demands, with the reality that this would be a small building with it's door often ajar. Further, there was some hope to use a multiplicity of energy systems (e.g. wind and solar), so as to reduce dependence on one source of energy (e.g. the sun). The greater the variety of sources of energy, the less you have to bank on storing said energy for long periods of time. As it turns out, the specification of the building being totally off-grid, in addition the the location of the booth being between a number of large institutional buildings made this a particularly challenging issue. It will be interesting to see what the final product looks like.
Overall, this was primarily an academic exercise, as the students had been working on the particular design exercise since September. Ideally, a charrette would be called at an earlier date - to initiate a creative undertaking, for example, or to try to develop a shared vision for a project. Given the amount of learning required for the students to actually undertake this project, they had only recently developed sufficient expertise to really use the knowledge provided by industry experts this afternoon. It will be an excellent experience for those students interested in pursuing a career that involves regular integrated design sessions, such as those that are part of most complex or particularly sustainable designs.
As a total aside, I noticed that only 4 of the 33 students in the class were women. This kind of strong gender divide is something I never see in business school. Some things are slow to change, I suppose.
