SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE: RALEIGH

For the semester before we took on Seattle, the Eco Village SPUDS class took trips and had guest speakers who specifically talked about the sustainability in their field. A couple weeks before we left the Assistant Professor of Architecture in the NC State University College of Design come in and talk to us. He told us about the sustainability projects that he has worked on in his career. In Seattle, he worked on a project, High Point. This area is specifically dedicated to creating a sustainable living area that is focused on making a better community. We took trips to the Office of Sustainability in the City of Raleigh, as well as visiting the Raleigh Convention Center.

While in Seattle we were comparing the sustainability of the city to the sustainability of Raleigh. After getting back to Raleigh and comparing the two cities, I realized that Raleigh has very minimal sustainable pieces of architecture. We are a very developed city in an industrial standpoint. Although, we are not very developed in ways of incorporating sustainability into our lifestyles. The Office of Sustainability did tell us that they are taking large strides towards making a more sustainable city.

While searching for sustainable pieces of architecture in Raleigh, not many designers came up. The ones that seemed the most focused on sustainability were Frank Harmon, In Situ, Innovative Design, and Oxide Architecture. In one of my classes, Design Thinking, I have had the opportunity to hear Frank Harmon and In Situ speak about their work and I have even been able to visit the In Situ firm.

Each of these firms seems to be trying very hard to make their work stick out from the others by creating more sustainable pieces and really honing in on the environments role and play in the process.