Given today’s renewed focus on recruitment and retention of faculty and staff members—to say nothing of the intense competition for the best and brightest students—a healthy and productive academic setting is imperative. So the long-term performance and humane quality of the physical environment has become a critical element of sustainable design on college campuses. The best 21st-century operational plans follow a three-pronged, integrated strategy for resource stewardship that combines human, financial, and environmental factors in a single process.

This starts with a life-cycle approach to decision-making that is grounded in respect for the unique campus environment (both indoors and out) and the people who use it. Physical and operational planning strategies that pay back quickly and are popular in the community—such as effective energy and water use—need to be balanced by human and learning factors. So in designing campus facilities more emphasis should be given to daylighting, the use of natural materials (such as wood and stone), and enhanced views of the campus landscape. One major reason for this: Human performance across the board is enhanced by connections to nature (a topic wonderfully explored by Edmond O. Wilson in Biophilia).

Other research demonstrates the impact that indoor air quality has on learning performance. So a design should also emphasize interiors marked, first, by high-performance systems that deliver improved air quality, better ventilation, and thermal comfort and, second, by materials and maintenance procedures that minimize the release of noxious gases.

It is through the vital partnership of the facility-planning, design, and construction teams with the facility- operation teams that healthy learning environments can be created at a reasonable cost. That so many of our campuses experience the challenges of sick-building syndrome, or other negative conditions in the built environment, speaks to the larger problem of balancing priorities and limited facility dollars. Leaders in higher education such as the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board have tried to achieve equilibrium between new facilities and existing ones by insisting that existing classrooms meet both quality and utilization standards before new classrooms can be built. In other situations, the tough choice to rehabilitate serviceable learning and living facilities rather than build new ones runs counter to the often-ingrained desire to create new facilities. In either case, campus facilities have to be built and operated with balanced attention to human and resource performance.

Rives Taylor, an autumn Buildings & Grounds guest blogger, designs higher-education facilities at Gensler and leads the firm’s sustainability task force. He was previously the university architect at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and he continues to teach sustainable-design methodology at the University of Houston and Rice University. You can read his previous posts here.