Research Campus Planning:
Developing a Plan to Implement Sustainability Beyond the Building Boundary

Thursday, October 23

Developing and implementing a sustainable campus plan is an emerging theme, ripe for innovation. Developing a sustainability plan for a campus involves looking not only at the campus physical facilities but also understanding mission requirements over time. Implementing a plan requires consensus building among many stakeholder groups because sustainable values will conflict with other traditional campus planning values. The resulting plan can serve as a framework for campus development and provide a vision for the future that can capture the imagination of the existing and prospective staff, and community leaders.

A sustainable campus plan, or policy, can establish a design context for sustainable high performance laboratories, or vice versa. For instance, a design team interested in developing a sustainable high-performance laboratory can catalyze campus management to look beyond the building boundary and help establish a sustainability plan, or series of sustainable policies, for the entire campus.

Participants in the breakfast session expolored the issues involved in sustainable campus planning and shared experiences and lessons learned with one another. There are several research campuses as well as university campuses that are moving in this direction and currently engaging these issues. The sustainable campus planning issues discussed included: getting started, developing an overall statement of goals, developing a campus energy strategy, parking and transportation issues, storm-water management strategy, how sustainability might impact campus image, how sustainability may impact building form and other issues of interest to the group.

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