Hopedance

Soiree, Sunday, February 10 at Steynberg’s Gallery, 1531 Monterey
7/8 wine and cheese, 8/9 discuss

                              	“Two Big Green Buildings”
                            
                             Rob Knapp, Evergreen College and UC-Berkeley

 Rob Knapp got his education at Harvard and Oxford (physics PhD), and his first real job at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1970. In 1972 he went to join then-new Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where he has been ever since. This quite unusual state-funded four-year college has made undergraduate education its overwhelming emphasis, hiring and retaining only on the basis of teaching quality. It has centered its program on team-taught interdisciplinary studies of significant problems and themes. Knapp’s own progression there moved from pure science to more and more applied and social scientific studies, specifically from unified physics/chemistry/calculus to energy studies to sustainable design of buildings, especially big ones—offices, public buildings, workplaces. 

Over the past 15 years, the architecture and construction industries have seen serious efforts to make commercial and institutional buildings greener. A stream of ambitious private-sector headquarters, Federal buildings, and public facilities, helped by the high profile non-governmental LEED certification system, have led now to the first “net-zero” workplaces. Knapp will describe two of these “big green” projects, the 2003 Seminar II classroom building on his own campus, and the new Bullitt commercial office building in Seattle. Opening ten years apart and both generally successful in their own terms, these buildings illustrate progress and limits to progress toward sustainability. Energy, materials, air quality, CO2 are all part of the story, but especially important is what can be learned about the relationship between green buildings and the working life that goes on inside them.