January, 2003 was the third anniversary of the opening of the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies.   Much was learned from and about the building in these first years. Many changes were made that have resulted in increased energy efficiency and enhanced our understanding of the facility as a complex system. Below are comments from individuals closely associated with the Center.

John Petersen, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies: I think if we knew what we were getting into we would often be less ambitious in setting goals. The potential educational and research value of a comprehensive data monitoring system for the AJLC became apparent to me even before I arrived in Oberlin in January of '00. My thought was, let's apply some of the same general systems principles used to evaluate the development of ecosystems to this "ecologically designed" building. Flash forward three years. Built on tremendous collaborative efforts of students, our intern, and colleagues at the National Renewable Energy Lab, we now have a monitoring system that collects, processes and stores data from 144 environmental sensors located throughout the building and landscape each minute. That's greater than 200,000 data points stored per day on environmental variables ranging from soil moisture to energy production and consumption, to chemical processes taking place in the Living Machine. In the process we have run several miles of wire through the narrowest of spaces, into the earth and into the pond and cistern, programmed thousands of lines of computer code, consumed thousands of hours of labor. As with David Benzing's trees outside my office window, we have tasted the fruits of this labor, but the major harvest is near at hand. Ambition can be a good thing…

David Benzing, Danforth Professor of Biology: The Center's landscape continues to evolve and expand. Last summer two students (Anne Royer and Laura Maker) and I finished installing the circular garden and harvested our first crop of summer vegetables. This coming growing season two more students and I will plant 6-8 relatively large shade trees in the south lawn. We've decided to use as yet undetermined species of native trees instead of trellised vines to summer shade the south exposure of the building. Virginia creeper will still be planted to shade the east side of the atrium. Meanwhile, the wetland vegetation continues to mature as do the orchard trees on the north berm and at the west end of the Center. Three to four years from now the canopies of the apple and pear trees on the berm will reach their final dimensions. Now that the location and design of the planned laboratory building west of the Center have been decided, its time to begin thinking about how the Center's landscape can be extended west to compliment this second Environmental Studies building. I'm also looking forward to the installation of the plumbing that will allow effluent from the living machine to be used to irrigate plants. Construction of the new laboratory will also provide opportunity to add enough new storage capacity for rainwater to keep the wetland topped off during the summer. The existing cistern is not nearly large enough to meet this demand. The new laboratory will contain storage and greenhouse spaces intended to support the maintenance of the landscape, support its agricultural projects, and process what's grown for consumption there.

Audra Abt, Intern: When I look back on how far the Living Machine has developed, I'm still stunned by what we've accomplished. What began three years ago as a few huge plastic tanks, some water, some sludge and various plant sprouts has blossomed into an ecologically functional and lushly beautiful engineered wetland. The size of the plants, some of them growing 8-10 feet above the tanks and flowering regularly in the spring and summer, is amazing to behold! In the first year of Living Machine operations, students and faculty spent their time nurturing the LM into a more stable system, while in the second year, we focused more on expanding our general knowledge of the system by setting up student investigative projects and beginning to explore techniques for potential long-term research into nutrient processing and water flow dynamics within the LM. Throughout the past year, due in large part to the work of a solid group of experienced student operators and the evolution of the LM ecosystem, we've applied for an EPA permit to irrigate the Center's garden and orchard with our treated water. Now a group of 15 students applies their experience in routine operations and water quality sampling and analysis toward providing information for this permit. We've also generated more educational posters for curious visitors and hosted visiting classes who used the LM as their living laboratory for a day. The educational potential of the LM was apparent from the time we set the tanks in the ground; now we're poised to take even fuller advantage by expanding our research and outreach programming in the next year.

Cheryl Wolfe-Cragin, Building Manager: The Lewis Center has received thousands of visitors in the past three years. We continue to receive weekly requests for tours of the facility that are usually handled by student tour guides. Many visitors are architects, engineers, and planners who have their own project in mind and would like to incorporate green architecture into the design or show donors what they would like to achieve. Many schools have sent classes to the Lewis Center ranging from kindergarten to graduate architecture students. The site has become so popular with some teachers that they have incorporated it into their curriculum and visit each year. In the near future we hope to have additional educational activities and displays available for public school classrooms that will be directly linked to proficiency test requirements. One fourth grader told me last week that he when he goes to college he "wants to come to Oberlin College!" The same week I received a note from a doctoral candidate thanking us for participating in her case studies for her dissertation in environmental design and planning.

David Orr, Professor of Environmental Studies: Programming and design of the Lewis Center began in earnest in the fall of 1995--before the US Green Building Council developed the LEED rating system for high performance buildings. We aimed for a building that would set the highest possible standard for academic buildings. But buildings are means, not ends. Accordingly, the Lewis Center was conceived as a tool to expand the sense of possibilities and the ecological imagination of all who worked and studied in it. Rather like Thoreau, who said he went to Walden Pond to drive some of the problems of living into a corner where he could study them, the Lewis Center has compressed some of the issues of sustainability to a manageable scale. Among other things, the rising generation must learn how to power civilization on contemporary sunlight, eliminate toxic materials, purify wastewater, protect biological diversity, increase efficiency in the use of energy and materials, and grow food sustainably. These challenges are built into the architecture, technology, and landscaping of the Lewis Center. They are part of the building and part of an evolving curriculum and research agenda. As design features and design goals they are now also part of a much larger movement on many other campuses. Representatives from several hundred colleges and universities have visited the Lewis Center to gather ideas and learn from our experience. Our experience will eventually be improved upon and surpassed--as it should be. The importance of the Lewis Center for the larger design movement owes to the scope of the design challenges addressed and the combination of design and education. The ultimate object of design is not better buildings but better thinking about the full range of ecological possibilities.

Next: Press | Return: Media Home