Sustainable Architecture Day 1

Upon arrival at Le Meridien hotel, we started off the JUA experience by meeting in a conference room and reviewing our topic, reviewing articles on the Web and viewing videos related to sustainable practice and the degradation of our ecosystem due to overuse. We departed for Cinderella's Italian restaurant where we indulged ourselves with luscious pizzas. After that, we took a maze of subways and buses to the small architecture firm, Map-Lab, where we were guided by Daniel Connolly and work-study student Abby and principal Stephen, learning about what it means to be an architect and what it means to be sustainable as an architect; one and the same.

"Some people believe they need to spend more money to build a green building but that's not true."

"The trend of being green is something good architects have always been doing and will continue to do; saving clients money and doing the right thing for the planet and for one another."

"I would not want to be an architect; 7 years of college and exams! These people all seem to enjoy what they do, though, and encouraged us to find careers we really enjoy."

"To be a good architect, you have to be educated in health, math, psychology, business...lots of big topics. It is also about having a good reputation in order to get work."

With loads of knowledge from our architectural buddies, we departed toward the Boston Architectural College where we got a grand tour of all six floors and even got to meet the Dean of Students...We then made our way home to Le Meridien.

After today, our group learned how simple it is to make a global contribution to not only our world, but our economy as well as being a green citizen. We learned that being sustainable is also being efficient, and could cut back on the negative global impact in our future. In visiting the architectural firm, we learned that being green deeply involves the customer/client. We learned about how architecture itself has had to change due to the awareness to helping the earth. It has been determined that inefficient architecture and inefficient funding by government to implement efficitent architecture and humanizing environments is a global problem. Overall, we learned that sustainable architecture needs to be a new way of life for the healthiness of our planet.