LEAFHouse and PVAF Host AIAS Community Service Event
On July 17, PVAF (Potomac Valley Architecture Foundation) hosted a team of 25 students at LEAFHouse (LH) as part of the AIAS (AIA Students) initiative Freedom By Design, or FBD. As the AIAS community service program, FBD partnered with NCARB to sponsor this year's event as a stand-alone program, taking place the day before the annual AIAS Grassroots Leadership Conference held in Washington, DC. This year, 10 AIAS students hailing from 10 universities in the United States, Mexico, and Dubai teamed with 15 students from UMD’s student-led Sustainability Co-op (SCoop) and a representative from UMD’s Office of Sustainability. In past years, this event known as “FBD Live” has typically engaged in a one-day build project such as a handicap ramp installation. This year’s event was a departure where the group participated in a charrette aimed at defining a collaborative, year-long project to create a legacy event based at LH.
The students started the day with a tour of reACT, the 2017 Solar Decathlon house produced by UMD, and then LEAFHouse, the 2007 UMD Solar Decathlon effort and AIAPV Chapter House. Next, the students observed several live demonstrations of innovative projects created by UMD students and professors. First up was a kiddie pool spewing a water jet into the air, powered by solar panels, showing how shading impacts panel efficiency. When students fully or even partially blocked the sun hitting the panels, the water jet stopped. Next, the group learned about two umbrella structures that support an arbor of flowering vines that self-water from a timer-controlled solar-powered pump and water reservoir. The creators of this array have measured a net shading effect that is 8 degrees cooler than a cloth umbrella. The group moved on to a display of a live wall of estuary plants that uses a vertical filtering media to remove silt from waterways. As a way of engaging visitors, the display uses a bicycle-driven pumping system to water the wall or it can be switched to a solar-powered pump when no volunteers step up. However, even the 107-degree heat index that day did not deter this group as our brave visitor from Dubai pedaled the pump and watered the system to her amazed on-lookers! And last but not least, a student demonstrated a raceway system that filters running water, typically from a stream, that uses algae as a filtering medium to remove nutrients from agricultural run-off. Once the algae is fully grown, the now nutrient-rich material can be sold back to farmers. The installation at LH is exploring the use of the same system applied to water taken from a reservoir fed from the rooftop, to see its effects on the reduction of particulate matter from pollution.
Living canopies adorning LEAFHouse
Live Wall Estuary Plants
The balance of the day was spent in charrette format, discussing design elements and considerations of a development innovation of PVAF, SPARC (the Sustainability Park and Academic Research Center). SPARC is envisioned as a place where the public, designers, researchers, policymakers, and manufacturers can come together in real-time to learn about the current state of and future trends in sustainability and resiliency. Someone visiting SPARC would experience and learn about a myriad of topics such as rain barrels, native plantings, sustainable agriculture, vegetative solar shades, stormwater management, and pollution mitigation as well as witnessing on-going research and development projects. SPARC would act as a cross-sectional view of all the elements of Sustainability and Resiliency that exist not only on the vast campus of the University of Maryland but also serve as a test-bed for manufacturers worldwide. In fact, we think this showcase would be a first-of-its-kind. PVAF hopes that the UMD will adopt the idea and build SPARC on the 3 1/2 acres surrounding LH. FBD hopes to contribute feedback and ideas to PVAF and to help grow SPARC into a full-time combination of scholarship, research, testing, and discussion, with the singular focus of answering the question, “What is ‘sustainability’ and how can we actually achieve it?”
The hope for this collaboration between PVAF, LH, FBD, SCoop, and the UMD Office of Sustainability is to create a platform that educates students and the broader community about sustainable design and resiliency using LH and PVAF’s ongoing plans to develop SPARC. This year’s activity, coupled with a year-long planning process, will allow FBD Live next July to hold a kick-off event at LH/SPARC. It may involve as many as 50 students, who would begin to actually build the vision created by the 2019-20 group, with the intention that each successive year’s event would dovetail into and build on the success of the previous year’s activity. It would also endeavor to create a lead-in for all FBD Live groups that follow. The intention is to build an ongoing community effort which fosters a long-term relationship with AIAS/FBD, continues to strengthen PVAF’s expanding connections with UMD, and provides a meaningful design platform for students to learn about and pursue issues of sustainability not only here at LH, but also at their own campuses around the world. What if the idea of SPARC and SCoop spreads far and wide?
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Blog by Bo Green, AIA
President, PVAF
