Building a Legacy

Inside, a welcome sign displays the Environmental Dashboard, which shows real-time data on resource consumption, and a 100-square-foot water sculpture rises to the ceiling. The sound of trickling water echoes through the plant- laden two-story lobby.

Opened in 2000, the solar-powered AJLC, which Building Design + Construction magazine once named one of 52 “game-changing buildings” alongside the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and London’s Savoy Theatre, is considered a pioneer of the green campus movement. The space laid the groundwork for a one-of-a-kind experiential learning experience and the future of green building.

The AJLC also launched Oberlin’s sustainability journey and cemented the college as a leader in environmental innovation. For example, Oberlin achieved carbon neutrality thanks to its groundbreaking Sustainable Infrastructure Program, which involved replacing aging infrastructure with an eco-friendly system powered by 850 geothermal wells.

“[The AJLC] opened a door that a lot of people have walked through since,” says Lindsay Baker ’04, CEO of the International Living Future Institute, a nonprofit committed to advancing regenerative design.

Baker says that prior to the AJLC’s construction, there was an assumption that the built environment couldn’t be changed or influenced by new ideas—especially from students. “That building and the way that it was designed, built, and then operated really busted that myth for a lot of undergraduates at Oberlin. We were told, ‘It’s possible to run buildings in a different way, to build them in a different way.’”

The Origin Story

It all started with a rainstorm—or a few of them.

David Orr, who is now the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus, had an office in the basement of Rice Hall, which flooded every time it rained.

“We had to build a building to get out of the wetland,” he quips. With a grant from the George Gund Foundation to assess the possibilities for an environmental studies center on campus, Oberlin launched what amounted to a full-year building course. The college brought in a dozen well-known architects from across the country to present architecture and landscape concepts to students. 

None of the options for using existing buildings panned out, so Orr and the students worked with the design team at William McDonough + Partners to create their vision for what would eventually become the AJLC.

Orr, who envisioned using architecture as a tool to teach environmental lessons, saw the building as an opportunity for students to be involved in every step of the process, to help craft the very place where future students would learn. For example, undergraduates have opportunities to oversee the Living Machine, which filters and recycles the building’s wastewater by mimicking natural wetlands. The building also incorporates natural lighting and ventilation and employs a ground-source heat pump system.

“You don’t stop to say, ‘Can it be done?’ You say, ‘Should it be done?’” Orr says. “The thing I’m most proud of about the building is that it drove green building in higher education and elsewhere.”

Sadhu Johnston ’98, who now consults on green building and climate readiness, couldn’t agree more. “That whole experience really shaped my passion and interest in green buildings and green building policy,” he says. “It had a fundamental impact on my career path.”

Johnston and his now-wife, Manda Aufochs Gillespie ’97, were involved in the building during the design and construction phase; Orr later tapped the couple to lead a sustainable community symposium tied to the AJLC’s creation. Even after the building opened, they gave tours and engaged with donors and prospective students.

“At that time, the building was this kind of living experience that we were having,” Johnston says, comparing it to a physical manifestation of what was being taught in the classroom.

Baker notes that the AJLC was a living building before the existence of the Living Building Challenge, which recognizes buildings that are net positive in terms of their energy and water; are free of toxic chemicals; and have shown positive impacts on the community.

“One of the handful of ways that the [AJLC] has had a lasting impact is that it has inspired and helped to fuel the growth of this program that we run that is designed to help people design and build and then operate and use these kinds of buildings as teaching tools,” says Baker, whose organization currently leads the certification program. “We work with a variety of different organizations around the country to use their buildings in the way that the [AJLC] does.”

Building a Green Community of Peers

The AJLC’s influence can be seen not only in physical buildings, but also from the impact graduates of the environmental studies program—and the college—have had in the world.

Historically, Oberlin has attracted students who “want to make a change in the world” and “want to be agents  of change,” says John Petersen ’88, the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology.

Today, he says the right metaphor to show the building’s influence is to imagine someone dropping a stone into a still pond and seeing the ripples spreading across the water.

“Everything we are here at this institution today—and not just this institution, but the [Oberlin] community as a whole—can be traced back to the AJLC and the ripples going out,” Petersen says. Through the building, the college was able to show “what it means to create something that’s truly novel and innovative” and “to attract creative, smart, entrepreneurial people.”