Project Green leader looks toward career after graduation

By: By John Bennett

Published: Friday, June 1, 2007

SCAD architecture student Paul Schwartzkopf started leaning toward a career in architecture at a young age.

“As a kid I was always interested in building my own environment — creating tree houses and forts and stuff with friends,” he said.

But he also developed an awareness early on about how the built environment intersected with the natural world.

“My parents were always big outdoors people, so we were always canoeing and hiking and that sort of thing. The area of St. Louis I grew up in was initially a very rural place, but I witnessed all my favorite stomping grounds get developed, and that influenced what I want to do,” he said.

What he wants to do now is use architecture to help “heal a fragmented world,” and he’s put that ideal into practice as president of Project Green, a student organization that’s thrived under his leadership.

“In the last two years we’ve expanded out of the School of Building Arts, where we began,” he said. “We are incorporating students from all majors and even people from outside the college.”

While the group is affiliated with the Savannah Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, its activities are wider in scope. The group has sponsored recycling projects and recently has lent support to a USDA grant proposal written by Union Mission. If the grant proposal is successful, the mission will establish a network of community gardens, with Project Green providing construction and planning expertise. Project Green members are also working with a community gardening project at corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 32nd Street.

Schwartzkopf said he hopes Project Green can also increase its activities within the college community by raising awareness and encouraging dialogue about sustainability and the design process among students, faculty and staff.

“I think more than calling it ‘green’ or ‘sustainable,’ it’s a healthy way of building, designing and living in general. Design really needs to be healthy in all aspects: economic, environmental and social. It needs to be responsible for all those things,” he said.

According to Schwartzkopf, SCAD is in the position to teach not just students but citizens at large about environmental and sustainability issues.

“We can make our buildings and how we operate as a college an example that others can follow,” he said. “We have the opportunity to set the bar and be a leader in Savannah, across the country and the world.”

After graduation, Schwartzkopf said he plans to work on a Vermont dairy farm.

“It’s a goat dairy, so I’ll be milking goats and making cheese and that sort of thing. At the same time, I hope to work for a timber-framing group in the area to develop my craft skills. I feel like there is more I need to know before I can design buildings in a healthy way.”

While farming might seem like an unusual choice for an architect, it fits perfectly with Schwartzkopf’s desire not to do “just one thing.”

“I always want to be doing a diversity of things,” he explained. “I’ll be building, farming, teaching, helping communities organize themselves and setting public policies. I want to have an active hand in all of these areas.”

Long-term, he said he hopes to work with other architects and perhaps start his own firm or nonprofit organization “to empower people to create their own places.”

He said, “I think more than creating places for people, architects have the responsibility to create places with people.”