The Ecological Design Center struggled to find a theme for this year’s Holistic Opportunities for Planet Earth Sustainability conference, HOPES Director Danny Schaible said, until someone questioned the truth behind sustainable design during a planning session.
“We’re building green, or better, but is it really sustainable?” Schaible asked. This realization led the EDC to the concept
“Permanance/Impermanance,” he said.
“With ‘Permanance/Impermanance,’ you make something and it lasts, in a perfect world, for an infinite amount of time,” he said.
Or it disappears, leaving the environment unbesmirched, such as the tent-like work of keynote speaker Christine Macy.
At the 12th annual HOPES conference, held on campus April 13-16, the theme inspired a variety of responses from presenters and attendees on the literal and metaphorical future of sustainable design.
The conference featured speeches by big names in the field, such as Macy, smaller issue-specific panels, and workshops, showcases and tours designed to bring attendees into the process of sustainability and to prompt change on their part.
At a panel entitled “Towards Net Zero: Single Family Power Plants,” Anna Scott asked the audience, “How many of you are using Nancy’s yogurt containers for your Tupperware?”
When a number of people chuckled and some raised their hands, she suggested that audience members extend that mentality throughout their lives.
The HOPES conference places high priority on inspiring attendees to make changes in their work and life. Most of the questions on survey’s handed out by the conference are designed to gauge that effect.
Another component of the conference is as an advertisement for the University’s well-known focus on teaching sustainable design.
“The HOPES conference serves as a pull into the program,” Schaible said. “It draws in a lot of students.”
Some of the events had a light-hearted slant, such as a panel that examined how the annual Burning Man festival builds a city in the desert that lasts only a week and how the World’s Fairs influenced the creation of parks after temporary buildings came down.
There was even a party Saturday night, with a band, interpretive dance routine and a trashy fashion show at which all the clothes were made with salvaged materials. Much of the weekend, however, focused on more pressing issues.
Penny Livingston addressed massive increases in water runoff caused by environmental degradation, which has ruined soil, and presented pioneering retention methods.

“It’s not good enough just not to be bad,” Livingston said about architecture’s penchant for using resources. “We’re giving back more than we take.”
A group of students from the University’s historical preservation program held a panel on their recent work in New Orleans. They showed pictures of vacant streets, lined with collapsed homes or nothing at all, while stressing the importance of retaining the area’s special character.
Preservation is an important way of helping New Orleans get back on its feet, the panelists said.
During his speech, Sergio Palleroni, an architect and visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, spoke about his work bringing sustainable design to the underprivileged, who some architects assume cannot afford the often-expensive methods.
“Green is not a luxury, but a building block,” he said.
Palleroni emphasized the use of traditional practices because they developed intuitively. This approach also calls for using local building materials, which he said reduce the resource demands building creates.
Since HOPES is student-run, Palleroni ended his speech by commending the students for their organizational work and for their attitudes.
“I really think we’re in crisis, and I’m really proud of the University of Oregon,” Palleroni said. “I’m proud of what you guys are doing.”