sustainability

An all expense-paid trip to the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington D.C., in April awaits the winner of a contest, co-sponsored by the Institute for Applied Creativity, to create a festival exhibit informing kids about plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

Communities can improve their hurricane resilience by better protecting wetlands, diversifying their respective economies and building communication networks for socially vulnerable groups, said Sam Brody, Texas A&M professor of urban planning.

Planning professionals can learn the latest in hazard resilience measures from videos featuring presentations by hazard reduction and recovery experts from Texas A&M University. The online learning modules are offered by Planetizen, an information exchange urban planning website.

In an exercise mimicking real world construction industry scenarios, Texas A&M students presented building proposals for the university’s new Equine Center to representatives of Gamma Construction, the company currently building the facility.

Philip Berke ‘81, widely regarded as one of the nation’s top land use planning scholars, is returning to Texas A&M in 2014 to rejoin the urban planning faculty and help lead the university’s Institute for Sustainable Coastal Communities.

An innovative, energy saving lighting system that can pipe healthy, full-spectrum daylight more than 40 feet into a building and potentially raise worker productivity is being tested at the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s Daylighting Laboratory.

Expo City, the focal point of Expo 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan, a world’s fair showcasing the latest developments in renewable energy sources, will be built from a design by a Chicago firm co-founded by Adrian Smith, an outstanding alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture.

An Oct. 5, 2013 auction of “green” doghouses, many of which were designed and built by Texas A&M environmental design students, raised almost $2000 for the Aggieland Humane Society and a group supporting emerging local architects.

Texas A&M construction science students fanned out Nov. 1 to visit five construction-related businesses across the state were they viewed the latest construction, material production and manufacturing practices as part of their fall 2013 semester field day activities.

Texas A&M graduate landscape architecture students developed a master plan for a major addition to the university’s College Station campus — the Texas A&M Gardens and Greenway project — a planned transformation of a 46-acre area of West Campus.

A distinguished career in architecture, support of emerging professionals and service to the community has netted Reagan George ’59 the Texas Society of Architects’ 2013 Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Honor of Llewelllyn W. Pitts, FAIA.

More than 2000 bicycle trips are taken each day in Texas A&M’s new bike share program, which debuted in the fall 2013 semester after an award-winning report by Master of Urban Planning Students showed a significant interest in bike sharing from students, faculty and staff.

Frances Whitehead, a self-described “designist,” talked about how she combines art and design to help transform distressed urban and rural sites at a Nov. 6 public lecture.

After almost three decades spent finding energy saving solutions for commercial and residential buildings, Jeff Haberl, professor of architecture at Texas A&M, was recently elevated to a fellow in the International Building Performance Simulation Association.

Last summer, Texas A&M hazard mitigation researchers partnered with their Dutch counterparts at Delft University in The Netherlands to developed a joint research agenda to combat a common enemy — flooding.