Integrating Waste Management into the Architectural Pedagogy: Modularity and the Solar Decathlon

Abstract

Throughout our time in architecture school, hours are spent studying sustainability and green design. The concern will always be that these are just studies, not real life situations, and many constraints can be ignored in academia. Studio culture does, however, provide a test bed for new ideas in sustainability, first realizing that it can not be invented overnight but instead is born from the marriage of tradition and convention and blended with modernity. These are important issues in reducing waste on the front end of a design, not in the final stages. Bean counting such as LEED© does not lead to green design, but rather sustainability must be considered holistically from the beginning in dimensioning, material selection, and construction method. The 2007 Solar Decathlon provided an excellent case study to test this idea of sustainability through integration into studio culture, and the marriage of conventional and modern methods.