June 10th, 2009 | 
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Building green can often mean breaking the bank. But the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was able to build their world headquarters in Cape Cod for about $220 per square foot. Resting on what used to be a brownfield site, the new building restored green space to the area and filled it with native plants. In order to cut down on operating costs, Boston-based designLAB Architects situated the nonprofit’s buildings so as to increase ventilation and natural daylight. The organization’s 200 employees helped to design the workspace plans to improve efficiency while also cutting down on square footage per person by about half.
When surveyed about what they hoped to get in a new office space, workers of the architecture firm that was one of the building’s first tenants asked for more natural light, improved ventilation and better open spaces. So the Weber Thompson firm in Seattle set out to bring all of these wishes to fruition, along with assuring that the building would stay in good financial standing to attract future rentals. (The total project cost came out to about $9.7 million.) The building also sits along a new streetcar line and includes showers for workers who opt to bike to work.
Residents of Synergy, the first of a four-phase development project in Victoria, British Columbia, live in a carbon-neutral building. They water their rooftop veggie gardens and flush their toilets with rainwater and can control rolling canopies to cut down on unwanted solar heat. An on-site heat and power plant hooks up with hydropower to supply electricity to the building, and it buys renewable offset credits to make up for the rest of the power. Vancouver-based Busby Perkins+Will Architects selected quick-to-regrow materials, including bamboo and cork, to finish off interiors.
Rather than draw attention to themselves, the structures at the Shangri La Botanical Gardens are there to bring visitors out into the 252-acre (100-hectare) preserve to showcase the surroundings—without disturbing them. Just as construction began in 2005, Hurricane Rita swept through the area, felling trees in the swamp and forests. Lake|Flato Architects in San Antonio were able to use many of the fallen tress in the new buildings. The center, which reopened the area to the public for the first time since the 1950s, was the first LEED Platinum–certified new construction in Texas.
Perched on the San Andreas Fault, Portola Valley wanted to replace its old town hall, community hall and library with buildings that would be safer, hold improved meeting space and be more environmentally friendly. Town residents and a special task force worked with Emeryville, Calif., architectural firms Siegel & Strain and Goring & Straja to build a town center for about $15 million that reused beams, paneling and fill from the old buildings as well as local eucalyptus flooring. A solar electricity system can crank out 40 percent of the center’s power needs, and they’re in the process of turning a nearby abandoned culvert into a cistern that will be able to store 40,000 gallons (150,000 liters) of rainwater.
This eco-sensitive synagogue was built to honor the Hebrew principle of tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world”. To achieve that end Chicago’s Ross Barney Architects firm began by considering storm water. They optimized usable space inside to decrease runoff, allowing for a smaller building footprint and more open green space to collect storm water.
The multipurpose religious, educational and community center also boasts green building materials, including reclaimed cypress wood, gabion walls filled with waste masonry (which help regulate temperature) and paints and finishes with low VOCs (volatile organic compounds).
It might be fitting for a nonprofit energy cooperative to be hyperconscious of its power consumption. With its new building, Great River Energy (GRE) became the most electrically energy-efficient building in Minnesota. GRE aims to be a model for its consumers to reduce energy use. The structure, whose total project cost came in at about $57 million, sits at the end of a main road in suburban Maple Grove and uses sunlight—from atria—to light work spaces for most all of its 425 workers. A nearby urban wind turbine helps in the headquarters’s 75 percent decrease in fossil fuel use.
A building’s environmental impact doesn’t have to stop at its threshold. That’s why the Gish Apartments are steps from a local light rail and have a convenience store downstairs, so residents don’t have to jump in their cars to pick up that gallon of milk or get to work.
To turn a San Jose brownfield into mixed housing for low-income and special-needs families, First Community Housing, a local affordable housing organization, turned to locally based OJK Architecture and Planning to create the 35-unit structure. Although some of the building materials—such as double-glazed windows and rooftop solar panels—were pricier to purchase at the outset, they’re already being offset by cheaper operational costs.
9. CHARTWELL SCHOOL–SEASIDE, CALIF.Massive windows help to provide learning disabled students at the LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design)–certified Chartwell with a healthy, soothing and airy learning environment. The windows, along with strategic solar panel placement and radiant heat, are moving the school—designed by San Francisco–based EHDD Architecture—toward its goal of zero net energy use. The school hopes that the model of sustainability will also be a life lesson for students. “Improved academic outcomes and responsible resource stewardship build on each other,” Chartwell’s executive director, Douglas Atkins, said in a statement.
10. CHARLES W. HOSTLER STUDENT CENTER–BEIRUT, LEBANON
Rather than creating a single massive building to hold athletic and meeting facilities for the American University of Beirut, the Minneapolis-based VJAA firm developed this diverse complex on the shore of the Mediterranean. The construction kept original trees to provide shade for buildings and outdoor spaces, and is oriented on an east-west axis to reduce the amount of hot southern exposure. The student center also makes use of the landscape, gently bringing pedestrians—and the eye—down the slope to the sea, which it capitalizes on for cool nighttime ventilation breezes.
Keep it Green
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