The Daily Gamecock

Green Quad celebrates 10 years of sustainability

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When Gene Luna came to USC in 1992 as director of university housing, he knew he wanted to bring sustainability to the university. But he never expected how far that goal would take him.

Green Quad will celebrate its 10th anniversary starting Monday. The residence hall has been a catalyst for sustainability across campus, but that wasn't a guarantee when it was first being built.

When he was offered funds to create a design for USC’s first-ever green residence hall, Luna had no idea what a green building was. But after some research, he decided that he wanted his new residence hall to be certified with leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED). He also wanted the new residence to be created with the same budget as the last two residences built on campus.

From this vision, Green Quad was born.

“I was convinced that this was going to be the way of the future,” Luna said. “This was not going to be a fad. This was going to be our lifestyle in the future for a long, long time.”

When Luna started the first stages of the project, there were no LEED-certified architects in South Carolina and just one in North Carolina. He hired the closest one he could find, and his architectural team spent a year creating the plans.

After a year and a half of construction, Green Quad opened in 2004. Luna  said its mission was to act as a “beacon for sustainability for the campus and even across the community.”

When the building opened its doors for students, Green Quad was the second green residence on a college campus and the largest green building in the country.  And the quad got a lot of attention — housing officials from other universities and the U.S. secretary of energy came by to check out USC's sustainable living option. hall.  

“I thought it would be a one-year, six-month story, good for the university," Luna said. "But it’s remained a story that’s good for the university.”

For Luna, Green Quad was and is more than just a building — it's a laboratory for students to learn about sustainability.

“In the design of it, I wanted very clearly students to be empowered to save utilities,” Luna said. “This kind of idea didn’t exist at the time.”

When students first started living in the building, each apartment was metered separately. Residents competed against each other to see which apartments could use the least amount of energy, and the winners earned prizes.

“That would make kind of a fun way for students to get educated and make an impact,” Luna said. “It was much better than sticking a sticker by the light switch and saying, 'Please turn this off.'”

Though the specific practices of the residence hall have changed over the past 10 years, faculty members still strive to teach residents about sustainability in creative ways.

“It wasn’t even on the horizon that you would take the knowledge you learn in the classroom and use it beyond the classroom in the real world,” said Joe Jones, faculty principal of Green Quad. “You really need to be able to take what you learn in the classroom and apply it.”

The goal includes thinking about sustainability in non-traditional ways and through different disciplines.

“Sustainability is not just trees and water and recycling. It’s social aspects, it’s economics, it’s business,” Jones said. "When we say sustainability is interdisciplinary, it really is. Any major that any student has can relate to sustainability.”

And after 10 years, Luna and Jones see this anniversary as a chance to reflect on the history.

“It’s a time for us to pause and recognize the impact Green Quad has made in the sustainability movement,” Luna said. “This was the way we led the state in deciding that green buildings are important.”


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