As UC San Diego continues to transform physically and intellectually, Vice Chancellor for Resource Management and Planning Gary Matthews brought together over 40 faculty, staff, and students on August 29 to begin the process of updating UC San Diego’s building policies and practices to ensure that environmental sustainability and human health and wellness are core requirements of building planning, design, construction, and long term facility operation and maintenance.
Organized by a team from the Sustainablity Programs Office (including a student intern from the US Green Building Council student chapter on campus), Capital Programs Management, and Campus Planning, the charrette embodied the collaborative approach that will be needed going forward to develop a new Sustainability Building Guide for campus. Departments represented included Housing, Dining and Hospitality, Procurement, the Health System and Medical Centers, Recreation, University Centers, and more.
Key themes that emerged from the charrette included:
- Strengthening a focus on reliability, redundancy, resiliency, and safety.
- Incorporating students and meaningful learning opportunities wherever possible.
- Looking at life-cycle cost factors and return on investment.
- Thinking through how best to address public-private partnership development, leaseholds, and retail spaces.
- Ensuring that the unique requirements of UC San Diego Health programs are considered.
- Considering long-term operational and maintenance impacts upfront and throughout planning, design and construction.
- Factoring in the ability to incorporate new technology.
In addition to a new Sustainability Building Guide for campus, future outcomes could include having new buildings pilot one or more green building certifications beyond the current standard of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver, such as WELL, Zero Net Energy, BREEAM, and/or petals of the Living Building Challenge.
Learn more about UC San Diego’s current green building efforts on campus here.