Taking a tour of the welcome center, especially seeing perspectives of the gentleman giving us the tour and Professor Deal, provided very different takes on a single building and design. Granted, having a LEED certified building on campus and the community is a huge asset and stepping stone, it seemed as though our tour guide was selling the design to us instead of enlightening us with its sustainable design. I got the feeling that the main reason behind designing the building in the first place, was soley as a selling, advertiseable feature of the college's campus. To a similar extent, I got the same vibe going through uptown Normal, although the design of the area seemed much more for a sustainable purpose than our welcome center.
All of these realizations, made me wonder how great of a system LEED was. As professor Deal pointed out, although striving for a Silver or Certified standard is great steps above general contracting standards, they are still far from what our class would consider an optimal level of design sustainability. LEED standards and requirements do get people in the right state of mind and moving design of green infrastructure in the right direction, but allow designers to fall short and settle for less than can the potential that can be achieved in many instances. I suppose if I had to sum up the problem I witnessed from the two "field trips," is that green designs are either being done for reasons that do not match with sustainability all that well and/or designs are felling well short of what spaces are capable of in terms of how sustainable they can become.
When decisions made regarding the designs seen, it seems most answers come from balancing needs of the area, who is paying for it, and what the space is being used for. For example, the welcome center fully fulfills its function housing the career center, welcome area, etc. As far as IWU is concerned and seems evident, they want to be able to hang a LEED plaque on the wall to boast about to visitors and have a nice building for the allotted budget. I imagine, had they designed the center for the utmost sustainability and expanded the budget, the design would not have went over well at all with donors and decision makers about our class. Uptown Normal as an entire design is quite sustainable from what I have encountered and lived near. I still wonder why they did not attempt to incorporate any water re-use mechanism, or on-site energy generations, but for what is being done, it is on a whole different level from the rest of the Bloomington/Normal area. I know the tour guide stated funds as a main factor, and with taxpayers footing most of the bill I understand this being a valid concern. Why though, don't they attempt to educated the taxpayers on the capabilities of this space in terms of sustainability and open up their view to how extraordinary this large space would be if it was designed to its full sustainable potential.
My thoughts have changed mostly just from experiencing the area and seeing all of the aspects that went into the design. I had not taken note of them before and really have not spent much time in the area. I have a greater appreciation with what we are doing with uptown Normal and am anxious to see it when the planners deem the project complete. I am somewhat bitter though, after hearing about the welcome center and realizing some of the critiques Professor Deal made regarding the "short-cuts" that seemed to have been made and the bare minimum was done to reach the certification.
Questions I would ask everyone involved with these two sites would be first of all, was funding the main barrier in decisions? And if so, what more would it take to convince the funding sources how much better the space could be utilized and eventually give back in energy costs to a point where they would be willing to expand the budget to be a level that would allow for an extremely sustainable area and not just a LEED certified one?
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