Imagine what life must be like for young students who daily face their fears of school restrooms. Fears that manifest themselves as malfunctioning automatic flush valves, the roar of the great white porcelain beast, and “gross” restrooms in portable structures. The resulting wet (or worse, soiled) clothing, or the general fear itself, can be a source of great embarrassment and ridicule for a child and lead to avoidance of school restrooms. Effects of restroom avoidance range from discomfort to any number of health/hygiene problems. Under such conditions, a student’s performance and general school experience can be severely impacted.

Discussions such as these often bring to mind various locations in the developing world, but this particular example comes from a school in the U.S. – a new school; a “green” school. And not only do some of the restrooms instill fear and revulsion in the students, but every unneeded flush is a very “un-green” waste of water and money for all to see. Such an inconsistent message, however unintended, may result in resistance to continued implementation of green/sustainable design.

We think this example (an actual case study from our own work) points out an area where the green/sustainability movement requires more effort – namely evaluation. Buildings in general are experiments; experiments in the performance of materials, the facilitation of specific human behaviors/tasks, construction methodologies, etc. This is even more the case for green/sustainable design, as we are essentially in the middle of a Precambrian explosion of green ideas and technologies, all with great promises of energy/resource savings and minimizing negative impacts on the environment and human occupants. But despite the good intentions, a lot of these promises rest on computer simulations, laboratory mock-ups, and appeal to authority. What is also needed to support these green experiments of design and construction is more on-the-ground evaluation of the various green/sustainable methods used.

Whether labeled post occupancy evaluations, built environment ethnographies, or something else, such endeavors evaluate the performance of a given built environment in relation to its relevant occupants, and in this case taking particular note of its green/sustainable elements. Through such evaluations we learn of the automatic flush valves in need of adjustment, and their affects on both water conservation and the general quality of student experiences. We also have a chance to truly evaluate a facility’s energy performance, comparing its demand load histories to those from a population of its peer facilities using various statistical techniques, such as regression.

From our own work, we’ve found that for those facilities not performing as predicted with regard to energy consumption, the reasons typically involve intertwined programming, design, construction, and operations issues, many of which revolve around the occupant. A few specific examples include:

• The use of a light sweep programmed to automatically turn the lights off twice a day in order to remind the teachers that daylight alone is generally sufficient. However, the resulting student distractions created enough animosity among some of the teachers to suggest some kept their lights on longer that they would have without the light sweep.

• The use of overly complex energy management systems that maintenance personnel and custodians become frustrated with.

• Inadequate custodial training (particularly imperative in a green/high performance facility) due in part to existing power structures that marginalize the custodians. For example, in initial building walkthroughs the interactions among the administrators, design team members, and contractors are often dominant, with the custodians relegated to the “back of the pack.”

In addition, the implementation of LEED itself requires further on-the-ground evaluation, something recognized by both its proponents and detractors. An evaluation we are currently conducting of the only LEED facility in the state of New Mexico (a BIA run Navajo elementary school in Prewitt, NM) for the New Mexico Public School Facilities Authority has uncovered both successes and problems with the implementation of LEED in a rural, Native American setting.
One of its major successes has been the creation of an extremely healthy environment. The school’s green housekeeping plan, its strict IAQ management plan during construction and pre-occupancy, and its high performance ventilation/filtration system have all contributed to producing a school with the lowest student absenteeism in its district. In addition, the principal must strongly encourage the teachers to take personal days, as very few are ever out sick.

However, our evaluation has shed light on several areas that require further thought. One of these is the conflict that can arise between LEED certification and local social/cultural issues. This particular Navajo school is laid out along the four cardinal axes, an important element of Native American cosmology. The media center, which symbolically and in reality houses knowledge (including Navajo cultural knowledge), is given prominence by placing it at the intersection of the axes, and the story pit at the very center of that. But this physical location prevents the placement of lower windows that provide exterior views of the surrounding landscape (such fenestrations are limited to high perimeter windows and a skylight), and therefore limit the Indoor Environmental Quality LEED points that could have been obtained from EQ Credits 8.1 and 8.2. Legitimate questions arise as to whether the adoption of local social/cultural elements in design should penalize a given facility with respect to certain LEED credits.

If we don’t evaluate our experiments in green and sustainable design, we will continue to repeat mistakes, waste valuable resources and money, and minimize the quality of the human experience within the built environment. In addition, we will provide fodder for those who seek to disparage the green/sustainable movement. We must be all that green is touted to be in order to prevent that. And the only way to ensure this is to evaluate our experiments.


Dr. Marcel J. Harmon is a partner and co-founder of Human Inquiry (www.humaninquiry.com), an anthropological consulting firm that specializes in ethnographic evaluations of the built environment.  He is an anthropologist and licensed engineer with over twelve years of consulting engineering experience in the building construction industry, specializing in lighting design.  Dr. Harmon has several publications, including an article on cross-cultural lighting design in the January 2005 issue of Lighting Design + Application.

Dr. Robert D. Leonard is also a partner and co-founder of Human Inquiry.  He is an anthropologist, statistician, and a former faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico where he taught, conducted research, and published dozens of books and articles in anthropology.  Dr. Leonard is the author of a recent narrative/ethnography of the Albuquerque, NM taxicab industry, entitled "Yellow Cab."