PBy exemplifies Bioclimatic Design
Sunday, October 30th, 2011Over 100 people gathered at Woodbury University in Burbank today for the 2011 Advancing Sustainability Business + Design Symposium, which was organized entirely by cross-disciplinary Woodbury students. The symposium featured a range of speakers highlighting intersections between design and business at all scales – from material to building to city – grouped into three sessions: Energy and Resource Efficiency, Bioclimatic Design, and Energy Conservation.
PBy’s own Leigh Christy was asked to introduce the topic of Bioclimatic Design, and used the Piggyback Yard as an exemplary case study. PBy was a perfect introduction to the idea that not only is bioclimatic design a response to natural environmental climate, but it is also a result of human social, economic, political and historic climates. Hence, any design is really an insertion into existing systems; the design process becomes more like systems engineering with the infusion of humanity and art; the result is necessarily a living organism codependent on it surrounds.
Subsequent speakers supported the idea of systems-based thinking at integrated levels, reminding attendees that adaptive, high-efficiency, multi-valent, long-term solutions are needed today – and tomorrow.
Thanks to the students of Woodbury for putting on such a refreshingly successful program.
