Architect
Mithun
An environmental learning center—nestled
into a rustic 250-acre nature preserve—plays
a dual role as symbol and teaching tool.
ISLAND WOOD
BAINBRIDGE ISLAN D,
WASHINGTON
Left: Each of the common rooms in
Island Wood’s three lodges is
focused around a stone chimney
made wholly from one type of rock:
igneous (shown), metamorphic, or
sedimentary. It’s one of many examples on the campus of educational
tools embedded into the architecture.
I’m walking with ten fourth-graders around Island Wood, a six-acre environmental learning-center campus built carefully, almost apologetically, into a 255-acre
nature preserve on Bainbridge Island, Washington. At the moment we’re in the “
educational studios” building, which is replete with green features designed both to
demonstrate architectural environmentalism and to elicit kids’ questions and interest.
A little girl emerges from the restroom, which has composting toilets, and says to
her friend:
Above: The greenhouse, or Living
Machine, also serves as a waste-water-treatment facility. Water for
toilets or irrigation is filtered, oxygenated, and processed by plants.
