Implementing Sustainable Design at NASA: Achieving the Right Balance

MaryEllen Ramsey, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
  
This presententation will offer an overview of the exciting initiatives going on within NASA regarding sustainability—ranging from management awareness to training of environmental and facilities planners/engineers, O&M personnel—all being realized in projects ranging from shuttle modifications, technical laboratory projects, and administrative facilities and procedures.

The presentation will examine a case study that includes "real world" dilemmas for NASA in decisions regarding the conflicts between sustainability and flexibility-when agency policy requires both. Open architecture labs make flexibility easy, but scientists/investigators regularly demand privacy for proposal and concept development, especially when contending against each other for grant funding and other competitions. Yet, too many individual labs can create complicated zoning scenarios that make a truly sustainable design difficult to achieve. Can such a design both foster collaboration while maintaining this desired separation?

The case study will use the "Space Science Building" currently in concept/schematic design to discuss these issues and show how NASA is seeking to create independent yet flexible sustainable labs.

Biography:

MaryEllen Ramsey is a Facilities Project Manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Having worked for NASA for 15 years, she is one of the agency's key sustainability advocates. While on detail to NASA-HQ she successfully encouraged the agency to establish LEED™ Silver as a minimum standard for new construction, launched the agency's facility sustainability training, and negotiated participation in Labs21. She is currently the Project Architect and Design Manager for the "Space Science Building" project to be built in Greenbelt, Maryland. Mrs. Ramsey has a B.A. in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

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