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Background: the need for teaching environmentally conscious architecture
Global energy and environmental concerns have driven a paradigm shift in the way that architecture is practiced and taught in the USA today. Since 40 percent of all energy is used to produce, run, and dispose of residential and commercial buildings ([21] National Institute of Building Sciences, 2011), and 38 percent of US carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions stem from this construction ([25] US Department of Energy, 2008), architecture and architecture-related professionals have realized the need to drastically change not only technical systems but all building components to become more environmentally responsible. Moreover, they recognize that future buildings must be resilient within an environment affected by climate change. Limitations of modernist icons, compartmentalization of knowledge, and the prioritization of form over function are being reconsidered and replaced by a cooperative mentality that recognizes the necessity for relationship building and systems thinking. No matter what priority is being addressed - resource limitations, global climate change, social responsibility, nature-informed aesthetics, or simply maintaining a competitive edge in a difficult professional market - it is crucial that graduating students are prepared to meet this challenge for environmentally conscious design. It is widely recognized that higher education can play a crucial role in shaping more socially and environmentally responsible future practitioners and that curriculum must reinforce these efforts ([23] Second Nature, 2012). Given the substantial social and environmental impact of the built environment, architectural education in particular is targeted for change ([6] Cortese, 2003; [9] Glyphis, 2001).
Looking closer at US-based sustainable design education in architecture, two key periods are important, the first during the 1960s and the second at the end of the 1990s. In the 1960s with the provision of abundant energy, advancement of technical systems such as heating, cooling, and air conditioning, and the lingering proclivity for transparent massing, many architects neglected climactic conditions of local contexts in their building and site solutions. Some university educators understood this shortcoming and began writing articles, books, and developing courses to reconsider the building-site-climate relation. Among them were [16] Sibyl Moholy Nagy at Pratt Institute (1955), [22] Victor Olgyay at the University of Pennsylvania (1963) and [8] Buckminster Fuller at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (1969). While the 1970s energy crises...