‘Every inch full of intention’: Living Village raises the bar for environmental stewardship
The Living Village student-housing complex at Yale Divinity School (YDS) was built to foster community that exists in harmony with nature.
Its bright, spacious hallways encourage residents to get to know their neighbors. It features a variety of common spaces — kitchens, lounges, terraces — where they can share meals, relax, and enjoy each other’s company. Every aspect of the complex, from its utility systems down to the component materials that give it form, is designed to meet the world’s highest environmental standards.
At a blessing and ribbon ceremony this week, the YDS community celebrated that completion of the historic complex, a project 13 years in the making, which now stands as a campus landmark to environmental stewardship — and a defining statement of the school’s commitment to ecotheology, a theological movement that views environmental crises as moral and ethical issues.
The Yale Divinity School community gathered on the Living Village Plaza for a blessing and ribbon ceremony celebrating the opening of the new regenerative residential hall.
“The Living Village is more than a building, it is an affirmation of the importance of community,” Divinity School Dean Gregory Sterling said, speaking to an audience of students, staff, and alumni in the complex’s plaza. “It is a countercultural call that emphasizes the role and value of a community at a time when the centrifugal forces of our society are pulling us further and further apart.”