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Emerging Green Builders invites Steven Moore to lecture

The College of Architecture Colloquium kicked off its lecture series for the Spring 2008 semester on January 30th with a lecture from Steven Moore, the Bartlett Cocke professor of architecture and planning and director of the graduate program in sustainable design in the University of Texas at Austin. Titled “Competing Visions of Sustainable Architecture: Can they all be right?”, the lecture presented a critical evaluation of six competing logics of contemporary sustainable architecture, their underlined concepts, and varying images of spaces and buildings, relating all of these logics to three dominant models of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social. Moore is a Loeb Fellow of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His latest book Alternative Routes to the Sustainable City investigates the exemplary cities of Austin, Texas, Curitiba, Brazil, and Frankfurt, Germany to examine how each city has approached and maintained sustainability.

Moore was invited to UTSA by students from Emerging Green Builders (EGB), the newly formed UTSA student organization affi liated with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), the parent organization of the LEED green building rating system. EGB local chapters around the country include students and young professionals dedicated to becoming and recruiting the future leaders of the green building movement. The UTSA chapter of EGB aims to offer the opportunity for young people in San Antonio and the South Texas region to get involved in green building activities locally, gain access to USGBC resources, and organize and participate in local events. Inviting Moore to UTSA represented the inaugural activity for EGB UTSA. The organization is currently preparing a variety of additional activities including fi eld trips and job/internship assistance for its members.

Emerging Green Builders Organizational efforts for EGB UTSA started in summer 2007 through the initiative of a several students in the College of Architecture in collaboration with the local USGBC chapter and under the supervision of two faculty advisors from the College: Marc Giaccardo and Hazem Rashed-Ali. The organization was offi cially recognized by UTSA in the fall 2007 semester and its membership has now grown to more than 120 students. One of the offi cers and founding member of EGB UTSA, Nicholas Arnold who recently graduated form CoA’s undergraduate program, was recently elected to represent the South Central region in the EGB National Committee. In his new role, Arnold recently attended a meeting of that committee in Washington D.C. in which future plans to further develop the activities EGB plays were discussed.