Teaching sustainability in a six star green building

The building that houses the School of Sustainable Development at Bond University on Queensland’s Gold Coast opened in 2008 and was the first educational building in Australia to achieve the maximum six star rating under the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star rating scheme. It serves as a living model of the potential that green building design offers as part of the push to reduce greenhouse emissions and as such has been a key element in the School’s curricula. While it has served well as an exemplar it is not without its problems. In this reflective paper the author, an academic who has worked in the building for the past six years, looks at what has worked and what has not from the perspective of students and staff. A series of semi-structured interviews was conducted with representatives of both groups of users to ascertain opinions of those closest to the building.