Do Sustainable Buildings Inspire More Sustainable Buildings?

Sustainable buildings offer numerous social benefits including improved health and productivity for occupants. This study adds to this growing body of knowledge to suggest benefits extend to influence occupant consideration for sustainability. In an undergraduate civil engineering senior “capstone” course, students were given a mock request for proposal to design a new campus building. Over the course of a semester students (n=120) worked in groups of four to develop detailed drawings including documentation for Leadership Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification of Silver or better. Class sections were randomly selected to work within a newly constructed LEED Gold building or a 60-year-old engineering building. Among these groups, students who worked in the LEED building were more likely to achieve a higher LEED score on their final project (p=0.04). Scores were less varied, more likely to meet the Gold standard and likely to include similar features as the building they were designing within. Students' final grades were compared and found not significant (p=0.3). These results suggest working within sustainable buildings can influence design considerations for more sustainable buildings.