I’m Ashley, from California. Im a current M.Arch 1 at Harvard GSD and Designer at as-is.us I did my undergrad at Pratt/UC Berkeley. In the past I have worked in the office of Atelier Bow-Wow in Tokyo, and as a Project Manager in stainless steel construction and fabrication. Can you guess the building I’m standing pictured in? (Hint: it’s in San Francisco, CA). The most inspiring sustainable building I’ve seen recently is the Children’s Village by Aleph Zero + Rosenbaum in Formoso do Araguaia which uses local materials and requires no heating or cooling. And it’s beautiful! It also has a really remarkable philanthropic financing model. The building and it’s continued operation is paid for by the major bank Brandesco which operates several schools in Brazil.
 

 
My image is of an almost entirely 3d printed project I did last semester. It is a hotel and auditorium for Yale University which is built on top of an existing Paul Rudolph structure. I am particularly interested in this type of reuse or historic preservation of buildings. It might in some cases prove better for the environment to reuse an existing building but in other cases greatly increase the amount of work necessary and thereby be less sustainable than tearing down the old building.
 

 
I’m interested in sustainability because it’s difficult teach and learn in school. I would like to address sustainability at many scales in school, within the design of our projects but also in the making of models and drawings. I’m currently advocating for the creation of entirely 3d printed models as a sustainable method of testing in school. The plastics printed can be entirely recycled, unlike many other modeling materials. In addition to having the potential for recycling these materials they are financially sustainable for students. For the last year I have been fabricating models only in 3d printed materials and have found a huge decrease in my spending on model making materials. I think that beginning to think about the environmental impacts of the ways we are making in school will make us better prepared to solve these same problems in practice.
 

Children’s Village by Aleph Zero + Rosenbaum in Formoso do Araguaia