Robert J. Koester

The Sustainable University: Progress and Prospects

Stephen Sterling, Larch Maxey, Heather Luna (Eds), Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon, Oxon, and New York, 2012, 332 pages,

Higher Education, Adult Learning, and Greening of the Economy

118.60 (hard cover),

Embracing the Future: The Ball State University Geothermal Project

116.00 USD kindle. ISBN: 978-0-415-62774-0; ISBN (e-book): 978-0-203-10178-0

Fractal community tissue: Differentiating the energy harvest through self-similar urban form

As formal learning communities, colleges and universities can readily integrate social, economic, and environmental considerations in day-to-day operational practices and curricular offerings. Moreover, a college or university can work with, and model for, the local community, implementing ideas that then can be adopted by the surrounding community—or even by others in the region. Most importantly, the students and citizens participating in a well-structured campus and community interaction can adopt the modeled values as a bridge to lifelong adult learning.

The fundamentals of integrating the Commons': application as community tissue or urban implant

Ball State University will convert its campus from a coal-fired and natural gas-fired district heating system to a closed loop heat pump chiller district heating and cooling system serviced by more than 4,100 geothermal boreholes. It will be largest district ground source geothermal system in the United States. On May 29, 2009, an article in the The New York Times called Ball State “a pioneering university” for undertaking the initiative. The installation will include an integral programme of research designed to inform the industry – especially the owners of 65,000 other district-heated buildings in the U.S. – how to significantly reduce the “first costs” and risks associated with intensive borehole drilling, piping, and looping. These issues are cited in a 2008 Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored study as a major impediment to the more widespread adoption of geothermal systems. The planned research will incorporate 2D resistivity programming, geological surveys of the impact of high-density boreholes on ground temperature, assessment of the role of soil and water pH, evaluation of the influence of variable system water flow, analysis of hydrological data, and verification of the claims made by new geoexchange pipe manufacturers for dramatically increased thermal transfer (40–50%) and the concomitant reduction in the number of required expensive boreholes (20–35%) to service a load.

Greening of the campus: a whole-systems approach

This paper describes the application of fractal dimensioning and self-similar geometric patterning properties to the strategic harvest of solar energy. Specifically, the paper examines application of fractal principles at the scales of community, building, component, and material surface. Using fundamental geometric properties as the “simple rules applied repeatedly”, one can maximize (at differing scales) the opportunity for differentiating and managing the energy harvest to fit user(s) need. The paper discusses the use of fractal patterning as a means of dimensioning and scaling the “ratios of transparency” — the formal geometric expressions of conversion potential resulting from surface roughness condition(s). Roughness in fractal terms is a relative factor ranging in application from community-scale constructs on the land (which can mimic natural physiography) to the microscopic geometry of PV semi-conductor surfaces. Specific illustration at the scales cited can be correlated to the spreadsheet inventorying of energy harvest potentials. Fractal patterning provides an opportunity for treating strategies of energy harvest — embodied in community, building, component, and material surface — as seeds for a new urban form.

STARS and GRI: Tools for Campus Greening Strategies and Prioritizations

Clarifying the means by which we define and shape the commons, can become the platform from which we can seek to achieve community-scale integration in service to principles of sustainability. This paper presents the formulation of energy-related environmental variables — sun, light, wind and water — in “envelope form” for purposes of modeling alternative integrative patternings of communities as “tissue on the land”. Such modeling yields prototype designs of urban districts, urban blocks and/or individual buildings whose designs capitalize on passive energy manipulation as a “first order” response, thus structuring strategies for the integration of efficient “second order” metabolic systems which together provide the technical base for energy-related resource management.