HANCOCK — Rick Loduha knows that some ideas are slow to come about, including the idea that all human activity has impacts, many of them negative, for the earth. However, he thinks, also, that people all over the planet are starting to understand that on a large scale.
To urge that “paradigm shift” along, Loduha, who is associate professor of art and design at Finlandia University, is in the process, along with students and community members, of developing the Sustainable Keweenaw Resource Center at the university’s Portage Campus.
The SKRC is on the third floor of the building, and although it’s just getting going, it already contains various information sources about sustainability, including magazines, pamphlets, a computer and an “affinity wall,” which is also called an ideas wall. The wall is intended to hold small cards on which people write ideas they think will help create a sustainable community.
“The real concept of this is to create a network that is accessible to the students and the occupants of the (Portage Campus) building,” Loduha said.
Loduha said when he was a student of product and interior design at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in the 1970s, he heard a speech by Buckminster Fuller, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician and one of the world’s first “futurists” who championed, among other things, the idea that human activities can and should be sustainable.
“It turned my head around,” he said.
Loduha said he used the inspiration he got from Fuller and applied it to the design jobs he had after school, including one company that demanded that all their designers think in an interdisciplinary way and consider all aspects of design as they work on their projects.
However, Loduha said in general the idea of sustainability wasn’t gaining a foothold.
“I felt we weren’t getting anywhere,” he said.
Because of that, Loduha said he decided to go back to school to become a professor of design. In 1999, he came from San Francisco to work at Finlandia.
Soon after he and his partner, Barbara Hardy, got to the Keweenaw they thought the area’s natural beauty need not be threatened by human activity, and Hardy suggested the concept of a sustainable resource center.
“It was a concept we had been incubating for a long time, and then the window opened with Finlandia,” Hardy said.
The SKRC will work with Finlandia’s interdisciplinary planning and design program, Loduha said. The program includes classes in product design, interior architecture and sustainable design.
The classes are based on the concept that all three design disciplines need to be aware of each other in order to create products that are as earth-friendly as possible,
“Specialization is one of the things that got us into the (environmental) cul de sacs we’re in,” he said.
Loduha said many corporations around the world are starting to go “green” in their production methods and the products they create, which is good but it may be a fad with some of those companies.
“I think some of them are doing it because it’s popular,” he said.
However, Loduha said he thinks some companies are making the change because it’s the right thing to do.
The paint used in the SKRC is environmentally-friendly, Loduha said. The room is also using recycled materials, as is the interdisciplinary design studio on the floor below the SKRC.
Loduha said students in the design classes and the SKRC will be working with the Keweenaw Land Trust to do some design work for planned changes at the organization’s Marsin Nature Retreat Center near Oskar Bay.
There is a house on the property, and Loduha said students will be working on designing its interior to a different function.
“Transforming a residence into a community resource center has a number of challenges,” he said.
Students will also be working to develop solar power for the house, a pontoon to ferry visitors from the center to the Houghton/Hancock area, designing a campground and picnic area, and mapping the site’s nature trails.
Loduha said that eventually he would like to work with local manufacturers and other companies to help them make changes to become green, which he understands some business owners may be reluctant to undertake for financial reasons, but being green and fiscally sound aren’t mutually exclusive.
“Sustainable community is dependent on economic survival,” he said.
Hardy said she’s in the process of developing the SKRC Web site.
It will have a digital version of the idea wall. She’s also taking input about what people would like to see on the site.
“We’re really just feeling out what’s needed for people,” she said.
Loduha said although he’s been involved with the idea of sustainability for a long time, the concept seems to be taking hold around the world, which means the SKRC is getting started at just the right time.
“This is a bus I didn’t want to miss,” he said. “This is what I got into education for.”
Kurt Hauglie can be reached at khauglie@mininggazette.com
