MIT Students Design for a Sustainable Future in Cambodia

27 August 2010
Source: Justmeans

A new design-build course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers students in Architecture, Building Technology, and Environmental Engineering the opportunity to work collaboratively to undertake sustainable development projects. The course, called "Design for a Sustainable Future" was offered for the first time last year, co-taught by building physicist Marilyn Anderson, structural engineer John Ochsendorf, and architect Meejin Yoon. Students from different departments worked together to prototype, refine, and ultimately design a new green K-12 school to be built in Cambodia's Siem Reap province, home to the Angkor Wat temple complex. Construction is slated to begin next month.

The project was funded in part by the Jay Pritzker Foundation, whose beneficiaries, Daniel and Karen Pritzker, are committed to increasing educational opportunities for children in ruralCambodia, where much of the educated class was decimated by the Khmer Rouge. Their hope is, ultimately, to graduate students who could one day attend college overseas.

During the project, the 15 MIT students and 3 professors communicated with students of the JayPritzker Academy and collaborated with a Cambodian architecture firm to ensure that they were accommodating the needs of those who would eventually use the facility. The students also took advantage of computational modeling software such as Lightsolve (a daylighting simulation program developed at MIT) to improve the energy and environmental performance of the structures they designed. They had to account for the hot climate and extreme humidity, inventing design solutions to accommodate thermal performance while keeping in mind the limited resources available for construction and keeping the project's embodied energy low.

Donal Lessard, co-chair of MIT's energy task force, highlighted the importance of this type of project-based interdisciplinary learning, especially when it comes to tackling complex problems. He is quoted in MITnews as saying that this type of class is "has a positive influence on [the students'] motivation and how they learn in the future. They get to know real-world stakeholders and challenges, giving their learning experience new relevance." For another example of project-based sustainable development work at MIT, check out this post on Konbit, an online database for rebuilding efforts in Haiti.