To any and all...A quick question, kind of. My school, a 180 student charter middle school on Cape Cod is in the early stages of planning to build a new school, as we are currently housed in an underground strip mall. As the staff representative to the Site Committee and a guild member that teaches a timber framing class each year(started with the help of Todd Bissell), I have these great visions of a timber framed school/campus. With environmental education and sustainability as a driving force behind our curriculum, we are hoping to build a school that is not only a cutting edge example of "green" design (using LEED as a jumping off point) but also a structure with systems that can be used as a tool to educate the students and surrounding community. We have begun to talk with architects concerning the predesign phase and have developed a RFQ we hope to send out soon. However, I have been unable to identify any firms that might bring together the three specialties we are looking for: school design, timber frame design, and green practices/technologies. So my question is this...can anyone point me in the right direction? I've been through the websites of architects in the resource guide and spent time searching other web resources without much luck. Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks...Josh

Josh, what a great idea. As a teacher--English, history, architecture--and timber framer, I have often had the same dream. I cannot give you any specific resources, but you might look at Fox Maple. They used to publish an Alternative Building Resource book which had a lot of listings. Fox Maple also lists many links which may help you. I'll keep looking. Best of luck.

our local college has recently introduced a green building curriculumn......there is definitely a community of green builders in this area.....
the name of the college is Fleming College and thier web url is
http://www.flemingc.on.ca/
a specific contact you might try would be a gal named Helen Knibb.
good luck on the project.
-Mark.