[ShivaYoga] Green ashram / campus

Just for your information as they are sort of an ashram in the US:

AUGUST 15, 2008
University Website

Rendering of
Sustainable Living Center

Department Chair David Fisher with Sustainable Living students

Student Darla Murphy builds a beehive during a workshop on beekeeping

Sustainable Living student Gina Wolfe at the building site

Julian Potter making a class presentation on the newly built wind
generator

MUM students Jonathan Clifford and Marissa Markowitz studying
tropical fruit production in Florida

Totally off the grid! MUM's Sustainable Living Center —
the "ultimate green building"
In a ground-breaking ceremony on July 28, 2008, Maharishi
University of Management officially began its mission to build the
most revolutionary green building ever constructed. The Sustainable
Living Center will serve MUM's fastest growing undergraduate major,
the Sustainable Living program, the country's first and only 4-year
degree program in sustainability.

News of the Sustainable Living Center has swept the media — with
Forbes, the Chicago Tribune and others heralding it as "the
ultimate green building."

"This will be a building that teaches," says David Fisher, Chairman
and professor in the Sustainable Living program. "The sustainable
technologies we're using are tried and true, but no other building
in the world has put all of these technologies together under one
roof."

The building's cutting-edge, sustainable features include:
Off the grid with respect to electricity, heating, cooling, water
and waste disposal
LEED certified at the Platinum Level
A Fortune-CreatingSM building — utilizing Vedic architecture to
harness the total potential of Natural Law
Bau Biology compliant
Daylighting: unique architecture captures sunlight and directs it
throughout the building — for about three quarters of the day,
every single room in the building will receive 100% of its lighting
directly from the sun
Rainwater collection — with a filtering and storage system
Living Building: The Sustainable Living Center is being designed to
meet the Cascadia "Living Building Challenge," the next benchmark
of sustainable building beyond LEED Platinum — and it may be the
first building ever to reach this benchmark.
MUM's Sustainable Living students will be doing hands-on work to
assist in construction. "The building will be made of earth blocks,
built by the students from a mixture of compressed clay, sand and
cement," says Sustainable Living student Gina Wolfe. "It will use
solar panels and wind turbines, and we're installing a generator
fueled by student-manufactured bio-diesel, for back up energy when
there's no sun or wind."

Wolfe and other students speak of the building almost as if it were
a living organism, with its elaborate system of bio-filters and
aquatic plants and animals (such as snails) to remove contaminants
from the wastewater.

The 7000 square-foot building will serve as a research center to
explore innovative ideas in sustainability, and will include
classrooms, a greenhouse, workshops, kitchen, research laboratory
and offices. North Carolina architects Mike Nicklas, FAIA, and
Masaki Furukawa, AIA, LEED, of Innovative Design, a world leader in
sustainable design, are the project's architects, in collaboration
with Jonathan Lipman, AIA, MUM's campus architect and expert in
Vedic architecture.

The Sustainable Living Center is nearly a $2 million project,
funded through donations, investments and gifts of material and
labor. Over $850,000 in donations has been raised. The building
will be named after Eric and Mary Sue Schwartz and MUM graduate
Steve Guich, whose generous donations will allow construction to
begin October 2008. The building's completion is planned for fall
2009.

The project is yet another demonstration of MUM's environmental
leadership. In the Fall of 2007, University President Dr. Bevan
Morris signed the American College and University Presidents
Climate Commitment, joining 561 college and university presidents
around the United States who have signed the agreement. The Climate
Commitment is a pledge to take various steps toward becoming
"climate neutral" by reducing the campus's greenhouse gas
emissions. MUM is a "Charter Signatory" — among the first
institutions to sign.

In addition to the Sustainability Undergraduate and Sustainable MBA
programs, the University is now planning a Masters in Sustainable
Living. The program's mission is to provide students with skills
and knowledge to help them design, build and maintain sustainable
communities, not only at the local but also at the regional,
national and global levels.

For more details about the Sustainable Living Center and its unique
sustainable features, please see:

MUM's Sustainability Center in the news:

Development Office, Maharishi University of Management Fairfield,
IA 52557 641-472-1180

SMMaharishi University of Management and Fortune-Creating are
trademarks licensed to Maharishi Vedic Education Development
Corporation
and used under sublicense or with permission.