Dr. Ian Clarke's Passive Urban Greenhaus is featured in the Council of Universities' Going Green Report

Going Greener event poster
Sunday, November 1, 2015 - 4:00am

Greenhaus is a research project, led by Dr. Clarke and funded by the Metcalf Foundation, that optimizes passive solar designs that trap heat for longer periods than a traditional greenhouse. This creates opportunities for winter urban agriculture in Toronto and other northern cities with no supplemental heating. In addition to the research being conducted, the passive solar-heated greenhouse prototype will be used to assist with the undergraduate curriculum and to the examine cultural and social significance of food production and food security issues. The prototype is on the roof of the Sharp Centre for Design and is being used to collect data and evaluate performance. It will be used as a basis for an open-source, low production-cost, scalable unit that could be built on existing rooftops, parking pads or alley garage spaces. 

To strengthen ODESI’s capacity to report to the OCAD U community on human rights concerns and complaints and to ensure high standards in the collection and retention of confidential human rights data, ODESI worked with IT Services and York University’s IT Services to fully customize the newly procured OCAD U Human Rights Case Management System. The goal is for ODESI to begin using the new data management system in November 2015.

On August 13, 2015, a Sustainability Working Group attended by 23 members of our community met to develop the Sustainability Committee mandate, to plan for a Fall 2015 Sustainability Forum and to generate a number of new campus initiatives, to be prioritized by the Committee.