This Master’s Report focuses on applying sustainable design principles to the design of Rincon Community Hospital at Civano a new healthcare facility being planned for Tucson. Civano is a pre-planned sustainable community located in Tucson, Arizona that demonstrates efficient utilization of resources and planning. Based upon the principle of human thermal comfort, the proposed hospital design emphasizes integration with the surrounding environment by focusing on the relationship of the indoor and outdoor spaces. This includes maximizing the effective use of adjacent open air spaces, transitional spaces, and courtyards that are designed to maximize thermal comfort by working with the local climate to create comfortable microclimates around the building. Rincon Community Hospital at Civano also demonstrates the application of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) principles during the design process. The proposed design for the hospital utilizes passive solar design, daylighting, earth cooling, and building orientation to create comfortable environments for human occupation that require less energy than specified by ASHRAE Standard 90.1 1999. To achieve these goals, the hospital design was developed through analysis of the physical characteristics of the site, potential for LEED® scoring, and energy analysis. The results are presented as annotated plan, section and perspective images. It is hoped that this methodology can be applied to future development of sustainable healthcare facilities in desert environments that create healthy natural environments to aid patient healing and accelerate their recovery process.

This work advocates the implementation of the theory of Regionally Responsive architecture into the curriculum of architectural education; combining: (1) Increased awareness of historic architecture and regional treasures. (2) Understanding and applying the theory of Critical Regionalism in a regional context (3) Understanding and applying the basics of passive design strategies in response to climate (4) Understanding and applying the use of the most contemporary quantitative analytical tools (including various measuring apparatuses, computer simulations, wind tunnels, and daylight simulators) The goal is to integrate these four concepts into all sectors of architectural instruction to provide a lens of Regional Responsiveness to inform the student’s design work and professional paradigms. The laboratory for this work is the American Southwest and the prehistoric ruins. The concepts, however, are broad enough for incorporation into any region for any time period.

This thesis describes the development of early learning spaces which teach sustainable practices to children in a method that can be applied at a global level. Sustainability, for the purpose of this research, is defined as the idea of living throughout a lifetime with the conscious and unconscious understanding that natural resources are not unlimited and need to be respected and conserved through personal effort. Through a detailed analysis of both early childhood education methods and innovative sustainable design practices, a specific design matrix was created based on current standards set by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for New Construction v.2.2 © by USGBC, and from this matrix and casestudy analysis, 19 learning components were established. From research on two teaching methods, the Reggio Emilia and the Montessori teaching styles, it has been established that the environment surrounding the children acts as a pedagogical tool by engaging natural curiosity and demonstrating natural behavioral limits. Through the analysis of early childhood education methods, a learning paradigm outlining five key ways in which design relates to the way young children learn has been developed. Young children learn through five basic methods; tactile learning, spatial relationship awareness, connectivity of the child with others and the physical world, freedom of exploration, and the conceptualization of human comfort. Innovative sustainable design practices identified in this research include passive and active energy and water conservation, utilizing alternative energy resources, and incorporating recycled and non-toxic materials into the design components. Specific aspects of sustainability were chosen because they are easily adaptable into the lives and learning strategies of young children. By incorporating these strategies into a child’s daily life by exposing the function of sustainable techniques, the space creates a passive education approach. The learning paradigm developed from early education research is applied to current sustainable strategies, using LEED™ as an organization tool. The matrix was designed to show a clear connection between the way children learn and specific sustainable strategies. By relating each applicable credit to ways in which children learn, a set of guidelines has been established for incorporating energy efficiency and sustainability into a child’s life experiences. Four casestudies were chosen which demonstrate that educational spaces are convincing arenas for the process of integrating sustainable design features into the daily lives of children. Van Eyck’s Orphanage emphasizes the use of materiality and the idea of scale in spaces designed for children. The Argonne Child Development Center focuses on sustainable features of energy consumption and healthy resource utilization. Davidson Elementary School includes similar features but adds emphasis to the mutual relationship among school, immediate physical environment and the larger community. The Civano Community School utilizes sustainable strategies to teach children about environmental issues and awareness. From the sustainable learning matrix, and from analysis of case studies, which utilize key learning techniques and sustainable strategies, final design components have been developed and classified into easy to understand diagrams. The intent of these component diagrams was to provide a reference guide for future early childhood education design projects. The purpose of this research was to develop key spatial components for specific sustainable education spaces based on common ways young children learn and universal ideas of sustainability, which can be altered using site and climate specific techniques to be integrated into communities on a global scale. This document is meant as a guideline for other designers to use when considering the development of spaces to teach young children about energy efficiency and sustainability. The 19 key spatial components established in this document combine the ideas behind early childhood learning methods with multiple sustainable strategies, to provide learning spaces which bring sustainability to a level that children can understand. By encouraging sustainable choices and awareness at a young age, children will grow up with the understanding that it is their responsibility to preserve the environment and positively influence our future.