A few years ago, Paul Gerner began to gather a group of architects in Las Vegas to ask them what it would take to design a public school that used 50 percent less energy, cost much less to build and obviously improved student learning. “I think half of them fell off their chairs,” Gerner says.
几年前，保罗·格纳开始在拉斯维加斯召集一群建筑师，询问他们如何设计一所耗能少50%、建造成本低、学生学习明显提高的公立学校。“我想他们中有一半从椅子上摔下来了，”格纳说。

Gerner manages school facilities for Clark County, Nevada, a district roughly the size of Massachusetts. By 2018, 143,000 additional students will enter the already crowded public-education system. Gerner needs 73 new schools to house them. Four architecture teams have nearly finished designing primary school prototypes; they plan to construct their schools starting in 2009. The district will then assess how well the schools perform, and three winners will copy those designs in 50 to 70 new buildings.
格纳为内华达州克拉克县管理学校设施，该县的面积和马萨诸塞州的面积差不多。到2018年，14.3万名学生将进入本已拥挤的公共教育系统，格纳需要73所新学校来安置他们。四个建筑团队几乎完成了小学原型的设计；他们计划从2009年开始建设学校。然后，该地区将评估学校的表现，三名获胜者将在50至70栋新建筑中复制这些设计。

Green schools are appearing all over, but in Clark County, which stands out for its vastness, such aggressive targets are difficult because design requirements like more natural light for students go against the realities of a desert climate. “One of the biggest challenges is getting the right site orientation,” Mark McGinty, a director at SH Architecture, says. His firm recently completed a high school in Las Vegas. “You have the same building, same set of windows, but if its orientation is incorrect and it faces the sun, it will be really expensive to cool.”
绿色学校在各地都出现了，但在克拉克县，由于其幅员辽阔，因此很难实现如此激进的目标，因为设计要求，如为学生提供更多的自然光，与沙漠气候的实际情况背道而驰。“最大的挑战之一是获得合适的地点朝向，”SH建筑公司董事马克·麦金蒂说。他的公司最近在拉斯维加斯完成了一所高中。“你有同一栋建筑，同一组窗户，但如果它的朝向不正确，并且面向太阳，那么冷却起来就真的很昂贵。”

Surprisingly, the man responsible for one of the most progressive green-design competitions has doubts about ideas of eco-friendly buildings. “I don’t believe in the new green religion,” Gerner says. “Some of the building technologies that you get are impractical. I’m interested in those that work.” But he wouldn’t mind if some green features inspire students. He says he hopes to set up green energy systems that allow them to learn about the process of harvesting wind and solar power. “You never know what’s going to start the interest of a child to study math and science,” he says.
令人惊讶的是，这位负责最先进的绿色设计竞赛之一的人对环保建筑的理念持怀疑态度。“我不相信新的绿色宗教，”格纳说，“你得到的一些建筑技术是不切实际的，我对那些有效的技术感兴趣。”但他不介意，如果一些绿色特征能激励学生。他说，他希望建立绿色能源系统，让他们了解风能和太阳能的收集过程。他说：“你永远不知道什么会激发孩子学习数学和科学的兴趣。”。