The Danish-American Sustainable Design Workshop

by Margaret Matz AR’83 and Nanna Lyngo, of  Milestone Architecture PLLC

A Danish-American Sustainable Design Workshop (DasdWkSp) was conducted as a 2 week long workshop running from May 26 through June 5, 2015.  Two days were held at The Cooper Union. A total of 46 students participated.  The workshop was attended by The Cooper Union students along with visiting from the Danish school, Business Academy South West (BASW) and Pratt Institute students. It was a very successful event where Cooper Union alumni  Diana Lewis AR’76, Paul Garrin A’82 and Roxanne Ryce-Paul AR’00 lectured to a mixed crowd of students.

The Danish American Sustainable Design Workshop was a great experience both for students, professors, lecturers and coordinators!
Many lectures had a focus on sustainability and standards in architectural design.  Several of the lectures compared the German Sustainability Standards used in Denmark with the LEED standards used in the United States. The students worked together in groups to come up with an innovative idea for sustainable micro-units. They used their newly acquired knowledge from the lectures and tours to design a building consisting of 9 micro-units.

Many lecturers provided information about sustainable building, design and architecture.  See Program
The workshop also included tours of  building sites including a guided tour in the Santiago Calatrava World Trade Center Transportation Hub.

The finals of the workshop was held June 5th. The students presented their amazing work which showed a great insight in sustainable thinking, broad understanding of design and architecture, and great skills in hand drawing and renderings.

It was a strong competition, and after a great deal of discussion, the jurors decided that group number five had the most innovative and sustainable project. They received a prize as a reward for their hard work. The prizes were sponsored by The Construction Specifications Institute, CSI.

The first, second and third scholarship-awards were won by Abdur Chatni and team, Austin Meyer and team, and Kyle Keane and team. It is hoped that it will be possible to have a second opportunity to stage this event at The Cooper Union in 2016.

Additional photos are available here.