Green Campus Initiative
Campus platform to promote a sustainable culture.
The Green Campus Initiative (GCI) is a student-run platform to build an interdisciplinary hybrid platform sharing student projects and connecting the threads of sustainability across time and space. This is an on-going project; this semester’s goal is to build a MVP website archive and an in-person exhibition.
Role
soft skills
Our team
Time
Co-Founder with Jimmy Zhong
Leadership
Product Mangement
Outreach & Communication
UIUX Design
Graphic Design
EK Sun (ME!)
Jimmy Zhong
Lucia Li
Ke Xu
Eva Lu
...and growing!
Mar 2021 - Now
Background
‘Sustainability’ should be a mindset applied to all disciplines to encourage universal, sustainable, and inclusive art and designs.
However, ‘sustainability’ is only commonly perceived exclusively as ‘environmental sustinability’.
Goal
We want to redefine how sustainability is being discussed and applied in design and arts on campus to foster a sustainable culture and behavioral shift.
We are initiativing this movement at our closest community, the Rhode Island School of Design.
Theory of Change
Solution: the green campus initiative
Timeline
Challenges
How should we present sustainability as an adaptable framework rather than a symbol or discipline?
How can create incentives to engage the entire RISD community?
Problem 1
RISD has no centralized archive to support students exploring and sharing ideas, information is intransparent.
Problem 2
‘Sustainability’ is misportrayed under popular media as ‘environmental sustainability’, limiting student engagement.
“Sustainability feels distant. It gives me the impression of being about only about technology, design, systems, and irrelevant to fine arts.”
Process
Designing with, not for.
Sustainability is a collective effort of defining, participating and inspiring. We want to involve others in the design process, not to merely create products and services, but to create a community and a shared sense of ownership.
Exhibition
To show the hidden network of sustainability and early prototyping tool to inform the website design.
Highlight progress, connections to other projects, events and resources, and the impact they want to make
Prototyping for the website
Testing concepts in the physical space to inform the design of the website
Digital Archive
Encouraging student-curation of archived projects and discussions to self-define sustainability.
Student Curations to re-activate content
Students can curate their own projects or collections of other projects of a similar theme (e.g. biomaterials, waste management, etc)
Sustainability as a Fluid Definiton
Instead of gatekeeping ‘sustainability’, students will justify how their project relates to ‘sustainability’.
Progress since Semptember
To be continued!
If you’re interested in how this project will turn out, contact me through ysun06@risd.edu and I’ll send you updates on our project!
