Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR)

The Center for Sustainable Building Research is in a position of maximum opportunity for the future in its role "to transform the built environment in ways that provide for the ecological, economic, and social needs of the present without compromising those of the future." Building on past success and looking into the future: the work of the center should be focused in six areas, each directly linked to each other and to the built environment: Energy and climate change; the water cycle; Sustainable materials for a healthy built environment; Measuring regenerative design; Equitable designs to provide sustainability for all; and Creating regenerative and resilient communities. It is impossible to solve any of these problems in isolation from each other and transforming the building industry and built environment will strike at their root causes.

Overarching all of this work will be the role of the center in building eco-literacy in the broader community as it relates to the built environment. Students, professionals and the community need to be equipped with "the practical skills, analytic abilities, philosophical depth, and moral wherewithal to remake the human presence in the world. In short order, as history measures these things, they must replace the extractive economy with one that functions on current sunlight, eliminates the concept of waste, uses energy and materials with great efficiency".

The potential for the Center for Sustainable Building Research to identify and promote education, research, design and projects is tremendous. It should create viable pathways capable of transforming the built environment in the state and region to be a powerful model of regenerative design and development for deep sustainability on a global stage.