Building Alive, Designing to Thrive

Well I'm glad you asked. The question should really be what are we doing. We, the design team; we, the environmentalists; we, the students; we, the community; and we, the pioneers. To bring about change you can listen to the inspirational quotes about how one person can make a difference, or how it is the efforts of only a few that change the world, yadda yadda yadda. Well, the problem is that those quotes don't mention scale. Because while the 'Environmental' building field is still considered small, I know that there are over 20,000 LEED certified buildings in the USA alone. Which means there are probably and equal number of projects that just couldn't afford to go through with the LEED certification process. And there are surely a few thousand buildings already living and communing off-grid. Then to think, when we had our last design team charette here at Willow, we hosted almost 40 people to work through design, production, philosophical, curriculum and...

Hi! Thanks for taking a look at my Blog. The short version of my story is that I am a 22 year New Jersey native. I went to Roselle Park High School in Union County, NJ. Then, in order to learn the most I possible could about the environment (and it's sciences) I went to school 300 miles away- where I attended classes at the University of Vermont. The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources is an amazing melting pot of concepts, ideas and opportunities. The small school size allowed me to get close to professors and get super involved in the 'Greening of Aiken' projects during my time there. Although I started college intending to focus on conservation biology, I actually ended up becoming passionate about Ecological Design. Then to get some design background, I added a minor in Green Building and Community Design. Then, to boot- I realized how much opportunity actually lay ahead for me back in good ol' NJ and NYC- and how much I really tended to lean tow...