Building Green

While the Cate community has always fostered awareness of the world around us, the School itself embodies environmental sensitivity. Cate buildings are aesthetically in concert with the Mesa and suitable, as Mr. Cate once wrote “...for a boys’ school in California, where life should be plain and simple, much out-of-doors.” 

Reginald Johnson’s Monterey Colonial Style, open-plan architecture consciously echoes and embraces the natural beauty of the place. Cate faculty member and Art Department Chair Patrick Collins writes: “Cate buildings...blend ‘indoors’ with ‘outside.’ Open courtyards, patios, porches, and walkways are common in open-plan architecture. There is no closed-in feeling; instead, the sense of openness (and, in winter, coldness) which Mr. Cate loved so well is much in evidence.” 

As students live in dorms whose balconies look out to the hills or the Pacific, it is impossible to ignore the natural world and prevent it from affecting their lives. In this context, it is worth noting that current research finds a student’s surroundings have a profound impact on performance and general well being. Students who live and work in buildings with natural lighting show an increase in reading and math performance. Students who live in a space with “views” of the natural world show an increase in overall performance (data from United States Green Building Council). Well-designed ventilation in buildings reduces respiratory illness. Modern research only proves what Mr. Cate and his successors—during generations of building on the Mesa— knew intuitively. 

As our scientific understanding of ecological impacts and sustainability has increased, so has Cate’s commitment to responsible building and maintenance practices. The buildings constructed during the Cate 2000 Capital Campaign were the first on the Mesa to boast sustainable design, from the bamboo flooring in the faculty homes to the incorporation of passive solar heating. The buildings currently under construction are even more impressive in terms of sustainable design.

Newer buildings are not the only ones getting the “green” treatment; Business Manager Sandi Pierce and the Buildings and Grounds staff regularly review and evaluate older structures and landscaping to determine if they can be adapted or replaced by more energy-efficient, ecologically sound systems. “Every time we build anything new, upgrade, or landscape,” says Mrs. Pierce, “we consider the greenest option that will work. Cost is, of course, a factor in our decision making, but so is our responsibility to the environment. We use low or no VOC paints, recycled materials for building upgrades, CF lights, low flush toilets, and low flow showerheads. Even these improve over the years, so we are always reevaluating the products and resources that we use. Although some things, like our recycling program, cost more, it is the right thing to do.” 

We are reminded once again of the early days of our School, when Mr. Cate moved buildings rather than destroy and rebuild. Likely, the latter would have been cheaper, but Mr. Cate, consciously or not, carried the seeds of conservation in his blood… and those of us on the Mesa today continue to make these wise choices, even down to the one aspect of the Centennial Campaign master plan that calls for the repositioning of a faculty home—coincidentally one of the original school buildings originally moved from the bottom of the Mesa to the top—rather than the much cheaper but less environmentally and historically responsible destruction and replacement of the modest clapboard house.