Kiowa County Schools, Greensburg, KS by Farshid Assassi, courtesy of BNIM

In the midst of an unusually severe storm season, the Greensburg and Kiowa County Schools project in southern Kansas serves as an inspiring model for communities in the devastated portions of America’s southeastern states. After the city of Greensburg was leveled by a tornado in May 2007 that wrecked nearly every structure in the area, its city council became the first in the nation to require that all of its future public buildings be designed to achieve LEED platinum status. The new BNIM-designed school building, which houses grades K-12, is its own lesson in sustainable construction. Locally produced materials were used wherever possible, including the Kansas limestone excavated from a nearby quarry that serves as the building’s “shingle” skin. An onsite 50-killowatt wind turbine generates a portion of the school’s energy, with the remainder coming from a local wind farm, making this a community whose tragic past and hopeful future are both tied in aspects to forms of wind.