Monteverde, Costa Rica Sustainable Futures 2012
Directors: Martha Bohm, assistant professor of architecture; Christopher Romano, research professor of architecture For nearly 20 years, the Sustainable Futures program, founded by Professor Emerita Lynda Schneekloth and Dean Robert G. Shibley, has placed students in the center of a rural but rapidly developing and intensely biodiverse region on the Pacific slope of Costa Rica. The 10-week service learning program in architecture, landscape architecture and planning focuses on community-identified projects that support an ecologically and socially just future for this region. This year, 10 architecture and planning students from UB, along with students from the University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin and University of Oregon, worked with local stone masons to design and build a series of dry-stacked, terraced stone walls for a new outdoor classroom at the Monteverde Institute (where the program’s studios and classes are held). Other projects included a proposal for a wastewater treatment center that would support ecosystem stewardship and a master plan for a community sports complex. / Students gather on the terraced stone walls they designed and built over the summer at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica. Erected with the help of local masons, the space will serve as an outdoor classroom for the community. / Photo by Anibal Torres
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