http://www.centerforsustainablecities.com CSC Design Studio, Richard Steven "Dick" Levine (born September 11, 1939) is an American environmental architect, solar energy and sustainability pioneer, and professor at the University of Kentucky.
He has over 150 publications on solar energy and sustainability research, conducted in Italy, Austria, China and the Middle East.
While a student at RISD, Levine invented the Coupled Pan Space Frame structural system, for which he later received a United States Patent.
[8][9] Levine's academic work is notable in that he is concerned with the ways in which the form and process of architectural design can produce operational sustainability.
The Center for Sustainable Cities is an interdisciplinary academic and design think-tank co-founded by Richard Levine and Ernie Yanarella, a professor of Political Science at the University of Kentucky.
[14] In developing the Operational Definition of Sustainability, Levine and his colleagues recognized the need for approaches to ecological balance that embrace local needs and work within the needs and signals of culture and natural resources, requiring feedback at a quantifiable and appropriate scale.
[15] The SAB is similar to the Ecological Footprint approach to computational sustainability, which allows an individual to calculate the impact of personal consumer decisions on the natural environment.
[44][45][46][47][48] It is a comprehensive sustainable urban framework, an operational alternative to inherently unsustainable modern patterns of city construction and development.
Inspired by the formal elements of medieval Italian Hilltowns, Levine developed a family of urban forms that respond to the human-scale social requirements of a city.
Levine's City-As-A-Hill takes the medieval model and carves out the interior, building a three-dimensional structure of usable commercial and industrial space within a dense pedestrian city.
[53][54][55] Levine has referred to his architectural work as "sustainability-driven," recognizing that the scale of the single building is inadequate to comprehensively address sustainability.
When buildings are designed from such an efficient standard, remaining energy needs can be obtained by an affordable photovoltaic electricity generating array.
The CSC Design Studio headquarters is itself a zero-net-energy building, with annual electricity consumption offset by a 5.25 Kw Photovoltaic array installed in 2009.
[59] Coupled Pan Space Frame[60] (CPSF): Super-efficient multi-stage solar air collection system: Ahmad Zohadi has created a series of questions in the form of interview in relation to design and sustainability.