by Lisa Gelfand with Eric Corey Freed

The students of today are responsible for our future. With that in mind, we owe it to them to provide schools that are healthy, intellectually stimulating, and energy efficient. Sustainable School Architecture by Lisa Gelfand, with Eric Corey Freed, provides a handbook for planners, architects, and designers to create and maintain these spaces. Schools are an important part of student’s lives, and act as places of learning and community hubs.

Lisa walks you through sustainable school construction and draws on knowledge from other experts during the process. The book itself is split into chapters covering the planning and design phases all the way through construction and operations. Each section of construction is addressed including daylighting, HVAC, site design, and furnishing to name just a few. To construct a truly great educational space, one has to take into account all aspects of its design. This is a great resource, and in addition to its guidance it showcases nineteen sustainable schools from all over the world. These allow the architect or designer to gain a different perspective in relation to his or her own project, and provide real-world examples to back up the text.

The last section addressed looks ahead to the future of our educational system. Lisa describes how schools of the future will be more compact to fall in line with better urban planning, and that we will move ‘beyond green’ to systems that incorporate community and local or regional needs. In the end we will provide a better space for children and young students to learn and then share that knowledge. They will need all the help and resources they can get to protect and sustain our presence on this planet.