Contact: Maridith Geuder
Mississippi State University biological engineering, interior design, and landscape architecture students who collaborated on a recent class project may have different academic perspectives, but they agree on one thing-preserving the environment.
Classes taught by biological engineering associate professor Tom Cathcart, landscape architecture professor Pete Melby and interior design assistant professor Beth Miller joined forces to propose designs for a hypothetical academic complex on the Starkville campus.
The three faculty members are key players in the university's Center for Sustainable Design, a multidisciplinary effort to provide collaborative opportunities for addressing real-world problems.
Designated as the Land and Water Research Center, their six-week class project required students to develop designs that were self-sustaining and utilized natural resources for energy needs. The project focused on a nine-acre site that could provide spaces for teaching and research in agricultural and biological engineering, landscape architecture, and floriculture.
"It was a massive coordination effort," said senior landscape architecture major Kevin Tyler of Grenada. "After first making a site visit to determine the topography, we had to evaluate how many people the site would have to support, and then work with the engineering students to design a self-contained facility."
Once they considered how the site could take the best advantage of solar energy, the students then were able to propose environmentally friendly infrastructure designs for such things as on-site waste treatment and rainwater collection for irrigation.
Engineering students were assigned such tasks as the design of wastewater treatment methods and heating and cooling systems, as well as recommendations for high-efficiency building materials, said junior biological engineering major Melissa Knight of Bay St. Louis.
Once the engineers and landscape architects had proposed square-footage and site requirements, interior design majors were able to propose designs based on a building's shape, the direction it faced and available lighting, said senior interior design major Lauren Hoover of Winona.
"We learned firsthand how to manage a large project of this scope," said Aimee Hodges of Cullman, Ala., a senior landscape architecture major. "We also learned some of the ways that we can design to respect the landscape."
Though the student designs will remain on the drawing boards only, Cathcart and Melby agreed that the project provided an "outstanding learning experience" for both students and teachers.
"Their designs have an amazing amount of depth and creativity," said Melby. "They now all comprehend how to design based on the energy and material flows in the natural ecological system. The buildings are designed to take advantage of solar energy and dramatically reduce energy needs through earth sheltering and better insulation of walls and roofs."
Cathcart said a central assumption of sustainability "is that we are stewards, not owners, of the world's resources." While some of the student proposals may be idealistic, he said their design principles are sound.
"There is much that could be reasonably applied in the actual development of such a site."