Program Overview

Program Overview

The Sustainability in the Urban Environment program is designed to provide students with a critical understanding of practicing responsible architecture and engineering from a materials and products perspective.

Program Description

This course covers a full range of complex issues involved in the concept of product life cycle and product selection. Starting by reinforcing the student’s knowledge of material properties, they will learn to make the critical connection between material use and serious health, social, and environmental issues.

Course Objectives

Following this course, students will be able to:

1. Prioritize the most important environmental, social, and health impacts of building materials.
2. Assess the global and local implications of using specific materials and products.
3. Successfully employ green material resources and tools.
4. Apply available knowledge to specific contexts in order to make positive choices that promote healthier designs while sustaining the global environment.

Course Requirements

• Basic Material Presentation: Using textbooks, the internet, and articles, students will describe the characteristics of basic materials that form the fundamentals of most building materials.
• Midterm Exam: Given as a gauge to measure how successfully the students have integrated the concepts of ecology and material life cycles.
• Advanced Material Presentation: Using online resources, textbooks, and articles, students will choose a material/product that is both innovative and has sustainable implications.
• Final Presentation: Students will do one of the following:
  • Create a small design project and determine 5 materials that would be good environmental choices.
  • Choose one specific product and trace its entire actual life cycle and show the environmental, economic, and social implications of its use at each stage of its life.

Grading

• Method of Evaluation:
  • Basic Material Presentation: 20%
  • Mid Term Exam: 20%
  • Advanced Material Presentation: 10%
  • Final Presentations: 20%
  • Final Essays: 20%
  • Class Participation: 10%

Course Outline

The course outline includes the following topics:

• Introductions
• The Story of Stuff
• Basic Materials
• Toxins
• Accountability
• Building Rating Systems
• Product Tools
• Social Justice
• Beyond Benign
• From Scope to Focus
• Workshop for Final Presentations
• Final Presentations

Instructor

The instructor for this course is Susan Kaplan, LEED AP, CSI, CCS, MAI.

Schedule

The course is scheduled for Wednesday from 5:00 p.m. to 7:50 p.m. in the Spitzer Building 2M11 A/B.

Credits

The course is worth 3 credits and meets for 3 hours per week.