This graduate thesis explores the ideas and exploration of creating architecture as an educational instrument that will inform its occupants about a new, more environmentally-friendly way of living. The design itself becomes an energy efficient, sustainable, and green design that ultimately strives to become a prototype for self sustaining designs that strive to leave the area better off then it was before. By designing holistic and humble designs in a self-sustaining campus community, situated on the University of Minnesota campus in Itasca State Park, will educate and inspire both students and the public about a new more environmentally-friendly way of living. Those students studying environmental engineering and/or the biological sciences will develop greater knowledge through hands on experience and training. Additionally, throughout the year the park visitors are invited onto the campus to become more educated and potentially inspired by this community’s ideals. Ranging in square footage from 24,000 to 8,000 square feet, The design will consists of four buildings: a visitor’s center, community center, biological lab, and environmental engineering lab. These various spaces will explore innovative and creative use of materials, community design strategies, and consider what is actually needed to live, allowing it to become an evolving, self-sustaining campus community for the University of Minnesota to further develop through education and research.