Moving on from CODES - The keystones for a whole systems approach to low carbon schools

Moves towards reducing the carbon footprint of new buildings require a new way of thinking. Design research suggests that the development of more innovative and sustainable solutions increasingly highlight the benefits arising from the integration and participation of multiple actors with a wide range of technical and contextual knowledge and expertise. The need to address complex problems more systematically has escalated the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations and partnerships between stakeholders (Coley and Lemon, 2009). It is also becoming more widely accepted that the inter-connected dynamics of a system’s component parts is what determines its complexity suggesting that a holistic approach to problem solving cannot always rely on conventional methods. A mechanical problem is typically broken down into its parts before being able to systematically solve the problem piece by piece. Whilst this is powerful for some problems, and often requires extensive knowledge that aligns with the complicatedness of the task, complex issues, invariably involving people and their relationship with other actors (not necessarily human), do not lend themselves to such a reductionist approach. The design and subsequent operation of a school is one such complex phenomenon that requires a holistic approach which acknowledges the process of continual change that emerges from these interrelationships and patterns (Anarow, Greener et.al., 2003); it also requires collaboration, partnership and trust. This chapter will return to the Keystones on School Community Collaboration that emerged from the ENSI-CoDeS project (Collaboration of schools and communities for Sustainable Development, 2011-2014) and are summarised and reflected upon, with examples, in Espinet and Zachariou (2014). It will focus on the continuation of city based collaborations in the UK (Leicester)that were designed to ensure that the legacy of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme was one of enhanced sustainability facilitated through collaboration and partnership. The next section will summarise the BSF programme and will introduce the projects that will be considered alongside the CoDeS Keystones. The Keystones will then be introduced alongside examples derived from the projects and a final concluding section will explore what these projects and the Keystone concepts might tell us about the generic capabilities that have been introduced above and might underpin such collaboration in very different contexts.