The Penn State Board of Trustees approved at its Friday meeting the appointment of architects to construct a new building for the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA).

The site for the building will be between the Palmer Museum of Art and North Halls, and will allow for the subsequent demolition of Engineering Units D and E, which would be too expensive to renovate.

In a move that administrators hope will be a trend towards more "green" buildings, plans call for the project "to emphasize environmentally sensitive design and construction techniques, so that the facility will meet national certification criteria for sustainable architecture," said Gary Schultz, board treasurer and senior vice president for finance and business.

Trustee L. J. Rowell Jr., who heads the committee on finance and physical plant, added his endorsement to the undertaking.

"It was very interesting, very educational for myself and the other committee members to really hear about this kind of architecture . . . and to have an opportunity for our (SALA) to really be a model . . . for the future," Rowell said.

The architects will be Overland Partners of San Antonio, Tex., and WTW Architects of Pittsburgh, which also designed the blueprints for the HUB-Robeson Center expansion.