TLW accepted into the NCBDS 2011

Professors Shadi Nazarian, Chris Romano, and Nick Bruscia will be presenting the project as part of the National Conference on the Beginning Design Student (Beginning Of / In The End - Sustainable [re]starting) on April 1, 2011.  TLW was accepted into the "Integrating Integration" category.

The conference is hosted this year by the University of Nebraska, College of Architecture.
Conference website: http://ncbds.unl.edu/

About NCBDS: (from http://www.beginningdesign.org/)
The National Conference on the Beginning Design Student (NCBDS) is a national peer review scholarly gathering dedicated to the study and practice of beginning design education. For over 25 years, the NCBDS has provided a forum for design educators to present papers and projects and hold discussions related to introductory design issues.

About this year's conference theme:

Design schools have been dealing with issues of sustainability, design, and solutions to problems for a long time. It has been long known that meaningful design inherently calls for sustainable outcomes and leads to solutions in harmony with nature, not outside of it. While this may be true, the level of discourse about the impact our design could have in improving the climate, material reduction, energy reduction, and more, has increased to astonishing levels. William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle suggest a radical and deeper method of thinking and making. This call for change has been with us for some time but is our teaching paving the way for their type of new thinking. Are we really capable of this level of change? Can we affect change in what we do? If sustainable design thinking is the solution to environmental issues, do our early design studios prepare the way for the types of significant changes McDonough and Braungart require?

This proposal seeks to raise these and other questions about the shifts in practice and teaching. How are we responding or speculating about them? Our goal is to create a stage were educators can claim that what they are doing in foundation education is preparing students for the shifts and changes that have happened in the field of design. Conversely, the discussion may speculate that we are not doing enough. This proposal does not seek to prescribe outcomes, but rather we intend to provide a stage for open discourse and argument about where we have been and where we are going.