Executive Summary
While built environments provide people and society with a lot of benefits, they also have significant influence on our environment. According to EPA, people in the United States spend more than 90% of their time in the built environments. However, many of them feel less engaged with buildings since they have limited access to the information and knowledge about the buildings such as how the air is heated within the buildings? Many studies show that this lack of engagement will influence how comfortable occupants feel and how much environmental awareness they have within buildings.
In order to increase engagement with buildings, we explored the potential of using visual arts to convey information in a creative way. During the internship last summer in UW Sustainability Office, we focused on Paccar Hall, one of the LEED certified buildings on the UW campus. The previous study has shown that students have limited information about how this green building saves resources. After reviewing diagrams and audit reports, I made infographics on Adobe Illustrators by visualizing its information in terms of water and electricity used in the building. We will print them out and exhibit inside the building in a creative way that allows students and faculty members to walk into the display and to learn about where the resource used in Paccar comes from and how the sustainable features contribute to its LEED certification. Foster School of Business agreed with the idea and approved this project that will further promote their efforts of sustainability.