IslandWood

 

72

109

Koizumi Y.

Winnetka, IL

I will never be able to praise this place and concept enough, and there should be more stars. IslandWood, in many respects, is heaven on earth. Well, I'm not religious but you get the point.

Its founder, Debbi Brainerd, is a phenomenal woman who is married to Paul Brainerd, the equally enterprising fellow who created and sold Aldus (later Adobe). This forward-thinking couple invested millions of their own money into creating what can only be described as a perfect marriage of architecture, education and sustainable design/living.

The facility is one of the nation's finest, and one of five in the nation when built to receive LEED Gold certification. On 255-acres, it has incorporated the physicality, including the outdoors, into a learning experience with ingrains its visitors with the reality of inspired environmental and community stewardship.  

IslandWood offers programmes for children, teachers, adults, and graduate students alike. There are also speaker series and cooking classes, special events and fundraisers, and one can rent rooms for meetings. I've not even touched upon the specific sustainable design features, and could not name them all here without turning this already growing review into an epistle. Suffice to say it has photovoltaic roof panels and solar heating, floors made from recycled bamboo, cork, or concrete fly ash, bathroom partitions made from recycled plastic, composting toilets, salvaged woods, countertops made of recycled yogurt container composite, or soybean/sunflower seed bio-composite, recycled carpet, an on-site treatment system which provides tertiary wastewater treatment, which is then used for landscape irrigation.

Truly, I can't go on. My head starts to feel as if pressed between two water-filled balloons. Or to paraphrase the men in the diner to Randy Quaid's character in the movie "Independence Day", I'm almost feeling "sexual things".

You shall simply have to visit the website to see more, and by all means stop in if you're anywhere in the vicinity.

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