Thank you Inger Rice

Last Wednesday, October 15, I had the honor of exhibiting my work at the Walter L. Rice Education Building dedication ceremony. First off, the building is amazing -- the design of the building is beautiful and after I learned about all the sustainable features of the building, well, I was astonished. The building was constructed with a goal of achieving the highest sustainability rating possible, LEED platinum, and incorporates such features as geothermal heating and cooling, solar electrical power generation and advanced water recycling. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. There is a lot that goes into the LEED certification credit categories so I won't try to cover them here. For more information about LEED, visit the U.S Green Building Council at http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19.

I knew that Mrs. Inger Rice had donated the 342 acres along the James River to Virginia Commonwealth University, but I had no idea all of the other work that she did to make the Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences happen. In short, Mrs. Rice made it all possible from donating the land to helping with the majority of the funds that where needed to build the education building. So ... from one who uses the center to gather reference for my work I would like to thank you for all that you have done.

To Dr. Thomas Huff, Dr. Leonard Smock, Catherine Dahl, and Cathy Viverette, thank you for the honor and privilege of exhibiting my work at such an important event.

Below are some images of my work on display at the center and images of the building itself.

Some of my work on display in the administration part of the building.

Some more of my work displayed in a sitting area just off of the administration area.

"Blue" proudly on exhibit in the conference room.

"At Rest" in a corner of the sitting area.

This is the side of the education building where the doors lead to the conference room. If you look at the red arrow, you can see where water from the roof drains into the small pond just underneath it. I thought that that was just neat!

This is the side of the building where you enter the classrooms/laboratories (the shadows are hiding the doors). The front part of the building is the administration area.

This is the rear of the building that looks out onto the James River. It wouldn't be too hard to have a conference meeting here.

The view onto the James River from the back of the building.

I just had to show this! This is part of the advanced water recycling.

I hope that I have this right ... I believe that these are the storage containers for the rain water.

A view from the interior of the sitting area.

I could not cover all that the VCU Rice Center offers so I encourage you to visit the Rice Center web site at http://www.vcu.edu/rice/.