Ringling College of Art and Design
PA-2: Sustainability Planning

The Strategic Plan provides the following indicators of the Mission and Values in action: Promoting greater awareness and a more active commitment to environmental issues in a future-oriented perspective that acknowledges our individual and institutional relationship with the earth and our obligations to conserve natural resources.

Campus Master Plan Green Infrastructure Assessment and Framework Design Guidelines

The Strategic Plan for Sustainability establishes immediate, intermediate, and long-term goals that relate to curriculum: Immediate: Assess the status of sustainability in the curriculum. Intermediate: Expand inclusion of sustainability in the curriculum. Long-Term: Integrate sustainability deeply into the campus culture, curriculum and activities.

Ringling College's Design Guidelines stipulate that consideration for the Florida climate be integrated into building and landscape proposals. Buildings are to be designed with appropriate solar orientation, shade structures, and covered walkways.

Ringling College's Design Guidelines specify that building design should share common values and approach, more than any particulars of design. Among them: a respect for the land and climate, a preference for local materials, and an appreciation of regional culture, construction practices, and Florida lifestyle, as well as an appreciation for clarity of construction and honesty of details. Considerations for the Florida climate should be integrated into building and landscape proposals. Buildings are to be designed with appropriate solar orientation, shade structures, and covered walkways. Building form should be responsive to achieving high-performance goals.

The College's Design Guidelines promotes sustainable landscape design with consideration for: native habitat, integrated storm-water management, integrated buildings and vegetation, hardscape, and environmental stewardship.

Ringling College's Design Guidelines state that in order to respond to the ecological context of the Whitaker Bayou, storm-water planning measures will incorporate re-vegetation, integrating green fingers that reach into the campus, while remaining respectful of views and access points. New building architectural design will consider integration of storm-water capture and infiltration features in developing site location and design strategies. Designers will consider inclusion of green roofs, living walls or green canopies, storm-water planters, and cisterns.

The Strategic Plan provides the following indicators of the Mission and Values in action: Engaging actively in the exploration of historical, multicultural, global, future-oriented perspectives, striving for a diverse educational environment of inclusiveness, acceptance and equal opportunity.

Sustainability is a process seeking a dynamic balance between culture, population, ecology, economy and resource use relative to the rate of resource generation, availability and renewal. It is systems based, synergistically astute, feedback sensitive, holistic, cumulatively and collectively responsible, and operates on the principle of the triple bottom line and the “long now.” At its heart, sustainability is the recognition that we live a “cognitive ecology”. Sustainability is the way the by which we accept the responsibility and repercussions of our actions. It is a measure of personal, cultural, and planetary accountability. It is responsive to and responsible for the viability, vitality, adaptability and resiliency of the local environment, local culture, and the economy. Ultimately, Sustainability is about maximizing the synergy of connectedness, and thus resolving multiple problems simultaneously. The difficulty with Sustainable Design is that the process is not prescriptive. The solutions are not, and cannot be, standardized because they context sensitive and site dependent. There is no single recipe for sustainability. The most commonly used definition of sustainability is: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Since the Brundtland Commission in 1987 and the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, there has been growing support for an alternative socio-economic and business paradigm based on Sustainability. Sustainability has become a word of many connotations that functionally supersede its original description. While this can be problematic in specific conversations, the multiple facets of the word serve to demonstrate the evolution of the thought process underpinning the concept as well as recognizing the range of solutions inherent in its application. Sustainability is not a single thing. It is a contextually based process. For some, sustainability is a philosophy; a way of life and thinking. For others it is a tool for measuring the relative ecological/environmental value of different materials or products to determine which is the better option for a given application. In curriculum, sustainability runs the gamut from being a major, to a course, to an assignment, to a lecture, to criteria in assessment. In business, sustainability can be a goal or it can be a mechanism of economic decision-making. And social sustainability requires an integrated and holistic approach incorporating place, governance, community make-up and interaction, services and infrastructure. Functionally, sustainability is a way to improve connections, strengthen systems, synergize solutions, increase effectiveness and efficiency while simultaneously reducing, and eventually eliminating, current and future harm.

Ringling College is a member of CUMULUS and through that entity, the College is a signatory to the Kyoto Design Protocols, DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability), and the Honey Bee Network which includes The National Innovation Foundation – India, Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies, and the Institutions and Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network. Cumulus is the only global association to serve art and design education and research. It is a forum for partnership and transfer of knowledge and best practices. CUMULUS currently consists of 257 members from 54 countries. Ringling's Coordinator of Environmental Studies is also a coordinator of Sustainability in Design Education for CUMULUS.