In celebration of Earth Day 2005, April 22, the AIA and its Committee on the Environment selected nine examples—eight awards and one honorable mention for a planning project—of green design that protects and enhances the environment. The selected projects address significant environmental challenges with designs that integrate architecture, technology, and natural systems. The projects and their architects will be honored in May at the AIA National Convention in Las Vegas.

The seventh annual AIA/COTE initiative was developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Building News magazine. The jurors—Robert Berkebile, FAIA; Daniel H. Nall, FAIA; Susan A. Maxman, FAIA; Henry I. Siegel, FAIA; and Deborah Snoonian, PE—considered 10 metrics for each project: process, finance, land use, site/water, energy, materials, indoor environment, images, ratings/awards, and lessons learned.

The 2005 Top Green Projects are:

Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH), Austin, Tex. by LZT Architects
This 27,000-square-foot, new building serves as a meeting place and support center to help people transition out of homelessness. ARCH consists of a large common-use day room, shower and locker rooms, laundry facilities, computer room, art studio, and offices for various community support agencies. Located on the third floor in a pavilion-like structure on the roof is the 100-bed overnight shelter. Sited on a former brownfield, ARCH employs a 13,000-gallon rainwater collection system to supplement the building’s nonpotable water supply. A passive-solar hot-water system preheats water for the showers. Electrical usage is supplemented by a photovoltaic array. The “stack-cast tilt-frame” structural system, developed specifically for this project, reduces the amount of finished materials and formwork used and increases the quality of the exposed concrete finish. The strong connection between interior and exterior, created through the numerous interpenetrating volumes, allows natural light and views into more than 90 percent of the work spaces.
Photo © Thomas McConnell Photography.

The Barn at Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pa., by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Architects
The Barn at Fallingwater offers an adaptive reuse of a 19th-century heavy-timber bank barn and its 20th-century addition, framed in dimension lumber. It serves as an interpretive portal for the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy’s 5,000-acre Bear Run nature reserve, immediately adjacent to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. The grand upper level of the original bank barn is used as a seasonal area for exhibits, lectures, and other social functions. The one-story 20th-century addition now houses a multipurpose exhibit, conference, and distance-learning area. The existing, glazed block walls, glass block windows, and site-built roof trusses are exposed. Salvaged fir, new sunflower-seed composite panels, and sound-absorbing straw panels complement the palette of original materials while underscoring the structure’s connection to farming. A zero-discharge wastewater reclamation system, graywater flushing, and low-flow fixtures reduce potable water use. A ground-source heat-pump system, daylighting, and electric light sensors minimize energy use.
Photo © Mike Gwin.

Eastern Sierra House, Gardinerville, Nev., by Arkin Tilt Architects
The architects carefully designed this new, 3,450-square-foot sustainable demonstration home to take advantage of the rugged beauty of its site on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, overlooking the Carson Valley. Working with the slope, orientation, and dramatic views, the house centers on a courtyard oasis shaded by a photovoltaic array. While the garage and guest wing to the west blend into the landscape via sod roofs, the main form juts out like a boulder, its south-facing roof (oriented for photovoltaic collection) peeling up at the corner for passive solar gain and a dramatic view of a snow-capped peak. Using a variety of natural, efficient, and durable materials—primarily straw bale with an earthen finish (using site soils), metal roofing, and slatted cement-board siding—the finishes harmonize with the landscape. The house is virtually energy independent: Careful shading, high insulation values, and thermal mass keep the structures from over-heating in the summer, aided by the flushing of cool night air. In the winter, solar hot water panels located at the edge of the terrace feed a deep, sand-bed hydronic heating system and provide domestic hot water.
Photo© Edward Caldwell Photography.

Leslie Shao-Ming Sun Field Station, Woodside, Calif., by Rob Wellington Quigley, Architects
The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a 1,200-acre protected area in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, near Stanford University. As Stanford’s first green building, this 13,000-square-foot field station was designed to provide a natural laboratory for researchers, educational experiences for students and visitors, and refuge for native plants and animals. Site selection considered solar access and impact on natural habitats and archeological resources, and construction site management included fencing to prevent work under the drip line of mature oaks. The building itself includes a 22-kilowatt, grid-connected photovoltaic system and a sophisticated energy monitoring system. Passive cooling and solar heating systems combine with good insulation and extensive daylighting to minimize energy use. Waterfree urinals, dual-flush toilets, tankless water heaters, and native landscaping reduce water use, and rainwater collected from the roof is reused. The architect used salvaged, reused, recycled, and low-VOC materials when possible. Salvaged materials were used for siding, brick paving, casework, furniture, and bathroom partitions.
Photo© Brighton Knowing.

M. E. Rinker Sr. Hall, Gainesville, Fla., by Croxton Collaborative Architects + Gould Evans Associates, a Joint Venture
Rinker Hall is a new, three-story, 47,000-square-foot higher-education leadership facility within the University of Florida’s College of Design and Construction. The building serves the 450 students of the school’s Building Construction program through a mix of classrooms, teaching labs, construction labs, faculty and administrative offices, and student facilities. In 2004, it achieved a LEED™ Gold rating. The architects oriented the building on a pure north-south axis and thus capture low-angle light for daylighting. Egress paths from all classrooms at all levels are continuously daylighted, allowing for emergency exit during a daytime power failure. Materials were considered with three goals: first, to minimize built solutions; second, to minimize the materiality of those solutions; and, third, to facilitate disassembly through materials selection, assembly, and detailing. The architects also were able to take advantage of the building’s edges and make the assembly room on the north and the construction shop on the east indoor/outdoor spaces.
Photo © Timothy Hursley.

Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pittsburgh, by Davis Gardner Gannon Pope Architecture/Bruce Lindsey
This two-story, 17,600-square-foot building is a reuse and neighborhood revitalization project whose design process included meetings and charrettes with all project stakeholders, including the general public. The building uses daylighting and control of the quality of the light, as well as extensive natural ventilation in an environment where air-conditioning is prohibitively expensive. Heat from the glassmaking equipment is recovered. Thermal mass inside the building moderates temperature swings. A reflective and emissive roof system reduces both internal heat loads and the building’s contribution to the urban heat-island effect. The parking lot uses pervious limestone and is landscaped with indigenous plants; it doubles as an event courtyard and reduces heat build-up in summer months. The architects also incorporated landscaping and surface treatments to shade the parking lot and the building.
Photo © Ed Massery.

Sarah Lawrence Heimbold Visual Arts Center, Bronxville, N.Y., by Polshek Partnership, Architects
This 60,000-square-foot center, in addition to establishing a new place for the arts on campus, plays a leadership role in creating a building that is rooted in the fundamental principles of sustainable design. To reduce the impact to its wooded site and blur the distinction between exterior and interior, the new building is integrated into the topography of the existing hilltop. One-third of it is fully underground. In selecting the building’s primary materials—fieldstone, cedar, channel glass, and zinc—the architect found inspiration in the campus’s rich landscape and its historic architecture. Quarrying the stone near the site continued the college’s history of using local fieldstone in the construction of its buildings and furthered the goal of obtaining a LEED™ rating for the building. In addition, more than 60 percent of the project’s wood materials are certified as sustainably harvested by the Forest Stewardship Council. Native and drought-tolerant plants and low-flow fixtures reduce water use while indoor environmental quality is improved through the use of daylighting and operable windows.
Photo © Richard Barnes/Polshek Partnership.

Seminar II, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Wash., by Mahlum Architects
Design implementation for this 168,000-square-foot academic facility reflects the Evergreen State College’s commitment to rigorous interdisciplinary teaching and environmental advocacy. To create smaller learning communities based on the academic program, the architect designed the project as five semi-independent buildings (academic clusters). Each cluster supports four interdisciplinary academic programs and is composed of faculty offices, student “homerooms,” seminar rooms, breakout spaces, a workshop, and a lecture hall. A central open volume allows daylighting, natural stack ventilation, and visual connections among the academic programs. A system of open walkways, stairs, and bridges tie together the levels, and outdoor classrooms extend from each lower level into this landscape. To reduce the impact of the project on Thornton Creek and its native salmon, a vegetated roof covering half of the footprint was installed. The final design achieved 80 percent natural ventilation with mechanical cooling in the two large lecture and meeting rooms on the ground floor of each cluster.
Photo © Lara Swimmer.

And, though not a building, the jury applauded this plan’s effort and found it worthy of an award.

Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan, Portland, Ore., by Mithun Architects
The Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design plan integrates multiple sustainable strategies for energy, water, and habitat to transform and create a new identity for a 35-block, inner-city, commercial Portland neighborhood. The plan creates a new analytical, design, and economic framework for adding 8 million square feet of development over 45 years while dramatically improving the district’s environmental performance. Pre-development metrics were created as an environmental goal to strive for matching the performance of the ‘pre-development’ coniferous forest in new development strategies, while increasing density fivefold. Tree cover, solar utilization, carbon balance, and water use were among the factors measured against the predevelopment metrics. The architects created unique urban streetscapes and open-space patterns to integrate and celebrate water, energy, and habitat strategies. A new economic entity called the Resource Management Association was designed to harness public and private resources to implement the sustainable strategies over 45 years. All of these elements are combined in the Catalyst Project, a four-block, mixed-use project serving as the testing ground for the plan’s key elements.
Rendering courtesy of the architect.

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