Green Schools National Conference 2015

In our last blog post, we shared with you the approximately one-month process in which we designed and built our completely recycled conference booth for the Green Schools National Conference. HBA salvaged and re-used pallets, cardboard, paper rolls, wooden doors and other materials to create a place at the conference to facilitate the practice of sustainability and design.

March 4th-7th, the Green Schools National Conference was held in Virginia Beach in the Virginia Beach Convention Center. The Green Schools National Conference celebrates sustainability throughout K-12 schools and school districts. The conference brings together students, design professionals and school faculty to discuss and learn new ways to incorporate green initiatives into schools.

In addition to our unique booth, HBA wanted to “go the road less traveled” for our message at the conference as well. As designers, we are afforded the opportunity every day to create something new and exercise our imaginations. With our clients, we work to have them as involved in the design process as possible, to allow their ideas to be implemented into the design.

At our booth for the GSNC, we decided to create a place to bring that design process to life. We gathered several different types of materials that we found in our office that are typically thrown away, and designed items that would give those raw materials a second life. Our raw materials included paper rolls, wall covering samples, magazines and cardboard. We created a set of ideas for what people could make out of these raw materials, but our greater hope was that visitors would come by, see what we made, and make something new – something better. That way, as the day went on, the discoveries and designs would compound upon each other.

Just as we had hoped, we had many creative and forward thinking people visit our booth, and come up with designs that we had never thought of! Perhaps our favorite visitors though were the students, who came to our booth and created everything from musical instruments, to binoculars, to pieces of art that celebrated the pillars of focus for sustainability. Their enthusiasm and excitement reminded us why we were all there in the first place, to further our educational community and create sustainable, well-designed schools that will serve as tools for these future leaders to grow!