Sustainable Design Case Studies

Abstract

Case Studies have been used by architects and engineers to make public data they wish to highlight from a particular building. There is a wide variety of styles and formats that can be used for case studies and each convey their own message. Starting in the fall semester of 2010 until currently I have compared different styles of case studies, and tried to pick out what I found was most effective. I used the Psychology of Sustainable Behavior written by Christie Manning as a guideline to that I found useful. These thoughts were then put forward to formulate a basic case study of Wallin Medical Biosciences Building at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. First, to become acquainted with the biosciences building, I transferred documentation data for the B3 State of Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines (B3-MSBG). I transferred this data from an Excel workbook to an online tracking tool, which was designed by the Center for Sustainable Building Research with the Weidt Group. The facilities manager of the biosciences building allowed me to get an in depth tour and interview him about important aspects of the building. Through these various processes over the last school year I was able to become more familiar with sustainable terminology and case studies, allowing me to better understand the impacts sustainable design holds.