Creating Sustainable Solutions in Central America RISD students
have been traveling to Earth U's La Flor campus in Costa Rica to
explore sustainable solutions to global problems. For many
children who grow up in developing countries in Central America,
their classrooms are little more than cement buildings. Indoor
plumbing doesn't exist, clean drinking water is scarce during
the dry season and on sunny days, schoolhouses can turn into
sweltering sweatboxes due to poor ventilation. Given these
conditions, it's common for students to become distracted – even
dizzy – while attempting to concentrate. To help tackle this
ongoing problem, RISD students enrolled in the interdisciplinary
Innovation Studio: A High-Tech, Low-Tech School, a studio that's
offered by the Industrial Design and Landscape Architecture
departments, have developed a prototype off-the-grid schoolhouse
for rural Costa Rica in collaboration with Earth University –
the world's foremost research institute for sustainable
agriculture. Since 2008 RIS