LC Blog
Back to school - sustainably
October 14, 2011 at 5:00 PM by Dr. Robert Davis
September is back to school time, and by now students and teachers are fully engaged in the educational process. My own 16-year-old daughter is overwhelmed with the workload for her AP classes, and my wife is increasingly relying on the smartboard in her science classroom, while my 20-year-old son moves through his junior year of college. As school cranks up for another nine months, so does school energy use, raising the question - how can we light our schools and universities with sustainable design in mind?
With lighting systems, discussions of sustainability often focus on energy use. This is appropriate - but it is not the whole story. Sustainable schools must also provide high quality learning environments that are comfortable, even pleasant to be in for both students and teachers. It also would be great if we knew about the environmental impacts of the equipment being installed in our schools. This sort of broader view of what it means to be "sustainable" can help us to avoid some of the mistakes of a simplistic energy conservation approach from the 1970s.
One of our goals at Litecontrol is to help promote this broader view of sustainable design with educational materials for school and university designers, facility staff, and administrators. For example, our whitepaper titled, "Five questions to answer about sustainable school lighting," looks at topics of energy use, pleasantness, comfort, controls, and equipment impacts. Our new AIA-accredited course, "Sustainable lighting for schools," is now available for free at The Continuing Architect. And don't forget to check out the materials in the School & University portion of the Applications section of our website. There you can find several Project Profiles of notable sustainable school designs, our 16-page full color brochure on Sustainable School Lighting, as well as many other resources to stimulate your thinking.
Making our schools and universities more sustainable - we can do this. Our children need us to do this. Let's make it happen.
