Joshua D Lee

This book questions flexibility as a design approach by providing a longitudinal analysis of an innovative architectural experiment called the School Construction Systems Development (SCSD) project. The SCSD pioneered the use of performance specifications to create an open, prefabricated, and integrated system of building components that provided four modes of flexibility. Educational facilities throughout California used the SCSD system and it spawned a variety of similar projects throughout North America. This book traces the development and subsequent use of the system over 50 years through archival research, personal observations, re-photography, re-surveying, plan evaluations, interviews, and an advertisement analysis. These new findings provide useful insights for architects, educators, historic preservationists, and others about the affordances of spatial flexibility, the difficulties associated with technological transfer, the impact of unstable market conditions, the importance of user input during the planning process, and the need for long-term social relations to sustain architectural experiments.

The culture of design has struggled with how to address modernity’s quickening rates and forms of change. Between the dialectical dispositions of Parmenidean permanence and Heraclitean impermanence, a wide array of hybrid approaches emerged during the 20th century under the polysemic banner of flexibility. This dissertation questions flexibility as a design approach towards sustainability by providing a longitudinal analysis of a particularly robust mid-century modern experiment called the School Construction Systems Development (SCSD) project. In 1961 an influential group of philanthropists, architects, government officials, industry representatives, and school superintendents met to address various challenges facing schools at the time. They decided that an open, prefabricated, and integrated system of building components was needed that could afford four modes of flexibility—spatial variety, immediate change, long-range changeability, and expansion. The SCSD project was launched with sufficient financial backing from the Ford Foundation when a consortium of California school districts agreed to use the system on their anticipated projects and signed a joint powers agreement that guaranteed enough business to entice industry to develop components in accordance with the first performance specification to be used in the American building industry. The building system that resulted from this collaborative effort was adapted to the unique needs of thirteen unique schools, which have all been altered significantly over time. This dissertation builds upon and questions the findings of earlier studies of the SCSD through an in-depth, mixed methods examination of four representative projects. Archival research, personal observations, re-photography, re-surveying, plan evaluations, interviews, and a manufacturers’ advertisement analysis are triangulated and synthesized using the tools of grounded theory and actor-network theory. The results document the transformation of the intentions and receptions of the SCSD by various relevant social groups over 50 years. These new findings provide a great deal of useful insight for architects, educators, product designers, historic preservationists, and others about the affordances of spatial flexibility as a strategy for sustainability, the difficulties associated with technological transfer, the impact of unstable market conditions, the importance of user input during the planning process, and the need for long-term social relations to sustain sociotechnical innovations.

There has been a long, but disparate discourse among those responsible for our built environment about the inevitability of change on the artifacts we inhabit and those social contracts that influence their making. At a basic level doors and operable windows are an indication of the various flows that move through buildings. Innumerable “passive” and “active” strategies have been devised to allow changes to building floor plans and sections, to control sunlight and wind, to change function, etc. Hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of prototypes have been proposed and developed that change shape or composition in response to various social and environmental pressures. Though not always done with the goals of sustainability in mind, these prototypes often sought to provide increased agency for users, improved energy-efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and other commonly understood goals of sustainability. A number of books, hundreds of articles, and dozens of patents beautifully illustrate many proposed and built examples from which to learn but the descriptive terms employed are greatly varied (i.e., adaptable, animated, collapsible, deployable, enabling, evolutionary, flexible, intelligent, kinetic, manipulable, mutable, open-system, portable, protean, reconfigurable, responsive, revolving, smart, and transformable, etc.) and are therefore difficult to find. By reviewing and synthesizing the existing literature, this study provides a starting point for future research that offers both insight into how these terms have been used over time and a critique of such concerns and the exclusion of the topic within sustainability rating criteria.
Keywords: adaptable, kinetic, responsive, transformable, sustainable

Given the great variety of undergraduate sustainability degree programs, how do these courses of study compare to one another?

As the educational landscape of sustainability continues to emerge and transform, this research study offers a significantly refined and expanded comparative analysis of 38 undergraduate degree programs in Sustainability. Feedback received from our 2014 presentation entitled “Studying Sustainability Studies: A Comparative Analysis of 42 U.S. Degree Programs” (Lee & Gerhart, 2014), led to a complete revision of our pool of programs by focusing explicitly on “sustainability” and “sustainability studies” programs. This study provides a great deal of useful information regarding the characteristics and content of these programs.
A word frequency analysis of the program descriptions provides an overview of the relative importance of the 1,027 unique words used to describe these sustainability programs. This analysis provides evidence that there is an imbalance in programmatic focus across the programs and highlights several other key insights.
A curricula analysis breaks down the coursework for each program into several categories based primarily on the theoretical framework of the 3Es (Environment, Economy, and Equity). Courses were either placed into one of these three categories or classified as Integrated, Other, or Elective. Integrated courses explicitly address the 3Es as a whole. Classes labeled as Other fall outside of the 3Es framework and are generally skills-related. Elective courses are required by the degree plan but are open to the student’s own interests. These number of electives provides a useful gauge to the degree of flexibility within each program. The large background graphic illustrates the rich landscape of these programs by rendering the data in the “Curricula Analysis (Alphabetical)” table in three dimensions.
This analysis is useful for academic program directors, students, and others interested in understanding the current landscape of sustainability and sustainability studies undergraduate degree programs. The research documents the rich variety of offerings and highlights the tendency for programs to specialize according to the expertise of their current faculty or administrative structure.  Some schools provide more of a focus on economics, others focus on the environment or social equity, while others attempt to provide a fully integrated course of study. This analysis may help align student interest with appropriate programs, as well as help programs to differentiate themselves from peer programs in the field.

This poster presentation to the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training's 2015 Mid-Century Modern Structures: Materials and Preservation Symposium provides an analysis of a highly influential, but largely forgotten system of building components developed during the 1960s called the School Construction Systems Development (SCSD) project. The creators of the SCSD project questioned the effectiveness of “building to last,” a common sustainability mantra, by pursuing an alternative strategy—building to adapt. The primary intentions behind this flexible, prefabricated, and integrated system of components emerged in response to shifting pedagogies.  The lecture format and typical classroom arrangement of 25 to 30 students was being challenged by alternative teaching methods so the educational requirements for the project specified four modes of flexibility—"spatial variety, immediate change, long-range changeability, and expansion." To fulfill these needs the SCSD team produced a detailed performance specification that manufacturers used to create educationally-specific components that included an innovative orthotropic structure, movable wall partitions, ceiling pans with integrated lighting fixtures, packaged HVAC units with flexible ducting, and easily movable cabinets and lockers.

For this research a post-occupancy evaluation of four of the SCSD projects highlights seven challenges of preserving this mid-century, systems-based architecture. Shortly after the buildings were originally completed, a faculty and staff survey gathered the perception of those who used the building on a daily basis.  This survey was repeated in 2014 and a series of follow-up interviews were conducted. Changes in the architectural plans over time were also documented and confirmed via rephotography and an inspection of the current state of the system components. This evaluation finds that the SCSD did and does not perform as expected for a number of technical and social reasons. Preserving these buildings presents at least four important challenges—1)Discord between mid-century modern “flexibility” and preservation standards, 2) Misalignment with initial and existing social standards, 3) Unanticipated social and technological shifts, and 4) Misunderstanding the boundaries of the system.

To preserve what remains, and perhaps partially restore these important architectural experiments, it is critical that each of these challenges be effectively addressed. This will require many methods of material restoration (i.e. improved acoustic performance of the metal panel walls, paint removal from panel joints, and inexpensive seismic improvements) as well as the construction of effective social solutions such as an awareness campaign, training for teachers and facilities personnel, a clearinghouse of available components, and sufficient documentation of the system for bidding contractors.

Institutions of higher education are transforming their curriculum to better equip students for the complex challenges of the 21st Century and beyond. In this concurrent session workshop, faculty, students, and staff will work together to brainstorm and create the components of an “ideal” program in Sustainability Studies. The workshop team will use findings and considerations from their recent comparative analysis of 42 existing undergraduate programs in sustainability studies to propose a “straw man” program model, which workshop attendees will deconstruct, rearrange, improve and build upon. Additionally, the workshop facilitators will share insight from their current proposal process to create a new Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability Studies degree at The University of Texas at Austin. Working in small groups, attendees will be asked to consider: (a) core components of the program (foundational knowledge, theories and context, application coursework); (b) the program’s flexibility vs. prescribed course of study (the overall balance and integration of sustainability); (d) the program’s administrative structure; and (f) career and employment prospects of graduates. Small groups will reconvene to share their unique ideas and perspectives to the larger group. Special time will be devoted at the end of the workshop to articulate the value of interdisciplinary sustainability degrees to the workforce; workshop participants will answer the question “What will graduates do with a BA in Sustainability Studies and how will they market themselves?” The workshop’s quick pace will encourage rapid-fire brainstorming and leverage the resources of a truly interactive participatory process. Attendees will come away with a framework for refining existing Sustainability Studies programs and future curriculum development initiatives. This exchange will advance the national conversation on how emergent sustainability studies programs are designed and implemented to meet the needs of students in planning for our sustainable future.

What does a degree in Sustainability Studies look like? Institutions of higher education are in the process of transforming their academic offerings to better equip students for the complex challenges of the 21st Century and beyond, but they are doing so in great variety of ways. In an effort to better understand the current landscape of Sustainability Studies programs across the United States, The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) conducted a comparative analysis of 42 undergraduate programs. This analysis was used to inform the development of a new Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability Studies degree, which is currently being proposed at the university. The comparative analysis included a series of curriculum rankings, a content analysis of existing program descriptions, and follow-up interviews with eight program directors. The first ranking focuses on each degree’s required curriculum by its environmental, economic, and social equity content. The second ranking assesses the extent to which sustainability was integrated throughout each program and a final ranking evaluates each program’s flexibility (prescribed course of study vs. free electives). A content analysis using word frequency counts of the 42 program descriptions reveals common themes addressed in existing programs and suggests potential gaps in programmatic focus. The study team also conducted follow-up interviews with individuals from eight undergraduate programs that stood out in the rankings as well as the Editor of the Journal of Sustainability Education. These semi-structured interviews covered each program’s creation and intent, success and challenges in implementation, administrative structure, and preliminary post-graduation employment information. This analysis provided a number of important recommendations to UT Austin’s BA in Sustainability Studies faculty committee, including an emphasis on integration and social equity, a balance between flexibility and prescribed coursework, the importance of horizontal and vertical administrative support, and early engagement of community partners. Future areas of study include more in depth analysis of post-graduation employment opportunities and career development characterization. Feedback from conference attendees will contribute to further refinements of UT Austin’s proposed degree and perhaps other existing Sustainability Studies programs. This case study will advance the national conversation on how emergent programs are designed to meet the needs of students in planning for our sustainable future.