By Verena Paepcke Hjeltness
Professor, Industrial Design and Design for Sustainability
Chair, Council on Sustainability at SCAD
Lead faculty program on Design for Sustainability

During the 2009 National Teach-in on Global Warming, an event facilitated by the Council on Sustainability at SCAD with speakers from the Cities and communities of Savannah and Tybee Island, SCAD faculty, staff, and students, Paul Wolff (Tybee Island Councilman) presented a -for many- surprising fact: Tybee Island will no longer be able to provide showers at the beaches. In fact, all showers have been taken down already, which many beach visitors are not very happy about.

The issue being a very necessary restriction, according to Councilman Wolff, the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) assigned water consumption from the Floridan Aquifer will have to drop from previously 960,000 gallons a day to now 916,000 gallons.  One of the places to cut down on the water consumption, of course, the beaches, which used up to 55,400 gallons a month!

What seems to be a major problem and annoyance to some, is a source of opportunities for the new program on sustainability at SCAD. When I heard Councilman Wolff describing the situation, I realized that there is a fantastic project in it for SCAD. We immediately started making plans to combine efforts to tackle the challenge and bringing back the showers by using rainwater and perhaps add some other positive amenities supporting the cause.  This project will not be an easy endeavor, main concerns are building everything on a low budget, working with the community and the City to make sure Tybee Island residents agree with the ideas, using sustainable methods such as re-using materials, keeping transportation on a minimum level, designing for easy maintenance and simple construction with no harm to the environment, finding a way to collect and store enough rainwater for the yearly consumption and all on a tight time schedule. As of now, 15 students signed up to be part of this fantastic project all being very eager to start solving this problem in the fall.  So, if you run into a group of students early in the morning with a clip-board in their hands asking for your opinion about the project and your concerns don't be surprised. This project needs all the input and support it can get.  The project will officially start September 15^th and end just before Thanksgiving, total length 10 weeks. First initiatives will include an in depth site analysis of the North Beach Parking area as well as contextual research identifying the users' and community's needs and desires. We will hopefully work closely with the Tybee residents and the City Council, getting an understanding of the systems that were formerly in place. The students will have to identify methods to collect, filter, and store enough rainwater to serve the showers. The concepts will have to be developed carefully to not obstruct ocean views, or harm the existing eco-systems. By Thanksgiving you should be able to see some concepts in form of physical scale models and 3D computer models which should be a great starting point for any further development. 

If you are interested in some of the activities supported by the Council on Sustainability at SCAD, please visit www.blog.scad.edu/eco. We are a group of enthusiastic and motivated faculty and staff at the college who are working on putting sustainability to practice. The council was founded in 2007 by myself and has  

since grown from 7 members to 18. We facilitate events, such as the Blue Ocean Film Festival coming up June 11-14 organized by Prof. Kevin McCarrey, SCAD at Earthday organized by Prof. Cindy Hartness, the National Teach-in organized by Prof. Scott Boylston and Prof. Verena Paepcke Hjeltness and many other initiatives such as Alternative Transportation by John Bennett and the big end of the year Material Swap by Patty Henke.

This fall the new interdisciplinary program Design for Sustainability will kick off with an M.A. and an Undergraduate Minor. This program will allow students to gain knowledge in designing sustainably, while choosing their focus of study in existing disciplines. Courses offered in the fall will be:

SUST 704, Applied Theories in Sustainability (graduate)

SUST 708, Principles of Sustainable Materials (graduate)

SUST 290, Theories in Eco-Stewardship (undergraduate)

SUST 384, Design for Sustainability (undergraduate, Tybee Rain-showers)

If you have any questions about the program, the council or the Tybee Island rainshower project please contact me, Prof. Verena Paepcke Hjeltness at vpaepcke@scad.edu.