Top 10 green buildings by American Institute

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have selected the top 10 sustainable architecture and green design solutions.


The top 10 includes:

- City of Watsonville Water Resources Center by WRNS Studio. The new 16,000 square foot building consolidates three different city and county water departments and includes administrative offices, a water quality lab, educational space and a design that puts the story of water in California on display. The building, its systems and its landscape will serve to educate the public through exhibition and guided tours.

King Abdullah University of Science & Technology


- KAUST, Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by HOK. KAUST's new campus is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's first LEED certified project and the world's largest LEED Platinum project.



Kroon Hall


- Kroon Hall by Hopkins Architects and Centerbrook Architects & Planners. Replacing a brownfield site, Kroon Hall was charged with being a net zero energy building. The project has a mix of active and passive design measures and visible, invisible and interactive building features.

- Manassas Park Elementary School + Pre-K by VMDO Architects. The school is conceived throughout as a teaching tool that shepherds children along a path of environmental stewardship. Interior extended learning spaces offer views of the neighboring mixed oak forest, while elementary classrooms face shady moss and fern-covered learning courtyards featuring 'fallen' trees.

- Manitoba Hydro Place by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects and Smith Carter Architects and Engineers. The project was designed utilising a formal integrated design process to achieve goals of energy efficiency, healthy workplace environment, urban revitalisation, sustainability and architectural excellence. At 88 kwh per sqm annually, from a demand side, it is the most energy efficient large office tower in North America, with a 66 per cent improvement over the standard.



355 11th Street


- 355 11th Street by Aidlin Darling Design. The project is a LEED-NC Gold adaptive reuse of an historic (and previously derelict) turn-of the-century industrial building. The design team implemented a strategy of introducing subtle perforations into new zinc cladding to allow light and air into the occupied spaces.

- Michael J. Homer Science & Student Life Center by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects. The design encourages scientific inquiry, linking the school’s science curriculum to building functions throughout the seasons – how it breathes, resists gravity, conserves precious resources and generates energy.

- Omega Center for Sustainable Living by BNIM Architects. The Center has been designed to clean water, return the clean water to the local systems and educate users about the process. Eco-Machine technologies were selected to clean the water, utilising natural systems including the earth, plants and sunlight. The entire building and water process utilise site harvested renewable energy achieving a net zero energy system.

- Special No. 9 House by KieranTimberlake. The project was designed to provide storm-resistant, affordable and ustainable housing options for the residents of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Key goals were to create safe, healthy and dignified housing to residents in a flood-prone area and to empower residents to return to improved living conditions that take advantage of New Orleans’ climate.

- Twelve|West by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP. Twelve|West was designed to achieve the highest levels of urban sustainability and is expected to earn a platinum rating under LEED NC overall and LEED CI for the office floors. An emphasis was put on selecting low-impact materials, including salvage, reclaimed and FSC-certified wood. Much of the concrete building structure is exposed on the interior minimising the use of finish material and providing ample thermal mass.

Green Architect Projects Gaining Ground

Have you heard of green architecture, but are unsure exactly what it is? Green architecture concentrates on lowering the environmental damage done to the earth by putting up new buildings. This approach to putting up buildings while making it environmentally safe has been around for almost 30 years.

While green architecture was once viewed as highly unconventional, it's getting a lot more acceptable and popular. Many of the regulatory agencies are learning to recognize the advantages of the methods of green construction.

Today's green revolution can probably be tracked back to 1960s social awareness and the adoption of different methods of design. Green construction has made great strides since then. New techniques have been developed, new, innovative concepts and materials invented, and buildings have gotten greener.

A successful green project will reduce waste, use non-toxic materials, and pay close attention to the location and function of the building, as well as the climate that surrounds it. That's a far cry from "one size fits all" building methods of the past.

What makes a building green? There are a number of concepts that make up a green building. The main ones are energy efficiency, use of land, reduction of waste, materials used and the sustainability of the project. Green projects should use energy efficient electrical systems whenever possible, especially in the areas of heating and cooling. Gray water recycling, passive solar design, and the use of renewable power are all elements of this.

Building should be constructed to match the environment, rather than forcing changes to the site. Buildings should be located and oriented to take maximum advantages of their surroundings. Improved energy efficiency is the desired outcome and it makes for a building more pleasant to use. Use of land planning in the form of parking and transportation concerns become viable, too.

In a perfect setting the materials used should allow the building to be reused for other construction possibilities in the future producing minimal waste. Green architecture should reduce the dependence on wasteful and toxic materials and products, which is becoming much easier as the industry grows. Some buildings even reuse parts of other buildings, or waste materials such as old shipping containers.

Of course, not all projects labeled green are really green. Some are "greenwashed" - ordinary projects given a green veneer for respectability purposes. Others are built with good intentions but poor planning. That's why it's highly important and effective to know that all green projects be inspected carefully to ensure they are as safe for the environment as claimed. Helping the environment is complex, but it's worth it in the long run, with buildings being more usable and more sustainable years down the line.

SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY

The first official building to house Seattle's public library was built in 1891 on Pioneer Square, eventually moving to a block bounded by Fourth and Fifth Avenues and Madison and Spring Streets. In 1998, Seattle voters embraced a $196.4m makeover of the library, dubbed 'Libraries for All'.

The initiative includes plans to double the square footage in Seattle's 22 libraries, including the building of new branches – but the icing on the cake is the new $169.2m Central Library at 1,000 Fourth Avenue, designed by Rem Koolhaas' Netherlands-headquartered Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in joint venture with local LMN Architects.

Partnering Koolhaas on the OMA team was another well-known name, Joshua Prince-Ramus, now of REX Architects in New York. 37 library staff groups and 11 public work groups were involved as well, according to a library statement.

SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY FEATURES

OMA / LMN's creation opened in 2004 after 2.5 years of construction as an 11-floor, 412,000ft² library.

It includes such innovative features as a 'book spiral' on levels 6-9 that displays the entire non-fiction collection in a continuous run, and a 50ft-high living room alongside Fifth Avenue, all housed in a distinctive diamond-shaped glass and steel skin.

4,644t of conventional steel columns not only carry the weight of the building but support lateral loads such as wind and earthquake movement and the weight of the exterior building skin or curtain wall. The diamond-grid 'smart glass' was made by Okalux and custom-made by Germany's Seele.

Five platform areas allow form to follow function, each corresponding with different aspects of the million-book Central Library programme. The interior has been described as awash with natural light and space, inspiring users to read and borrow actual books in today's world of online texts and multimedia presentations.

The 'Mixing Chamber' on level 5 hosts a customer help centre, including 132 of the building's 400 public computers.

The 'Living Room' on level 3 features a teen centre, family fiction collection, shop, coffee bar, auditorium, the Library Equal Access Project and spaces to read or study. 'Living Room' flooring uses a recycled product called Worthwood made by Oregon Lumber.

A 'Seattle Room' on level 10 houses Seattle history and genealogical services. This level also houses the reading room, which has panoramic city views. Level 9 hosts a map room and writers' room. A children's centre on level 1 has special reading rooms.

A cross section of the new Central Library shows the 'mixing chamber'
customer help area and several purpose-built reading rooms.

HIGH-RISE MODIFICATION

"By modifying the superposition of floors in the typical American high-rise, a building emerges that is at the same time sensitive (the slopes will admit unusual quantities of daylight where desirable), contextual (each side can react differently to specific urban conditions) and iconic. Its angular facets form a plausible bracketing of Seattle's new modernity," OMA wrote.

Black wall tiles were made from a porous bead foam sound silencer called EPP-ARPRP sold by Acoustical Surfaces. Carpets were designed by Petra Blaise of Inside / Outside in Amsterdam, using Ege carpet of recyclable nylon or polyamid, from the UK. Level 10's 'pillow' ceiling is acoustic panels wrapped with ripstop nylon.

There are 731 seats at study tables without computers and 190 lounge seats, not counting seats for meeting rooms, out of a total $6.4m furniture budget. It includes a 275-seat auditorium and parking for 143 vehicles. The Central Library now sees two million physical patrons a year.

According to a statement from OMA, the library seems threatened, a fortification ready to be taken by potential enemies. "New libraries don't reinvent or even modernise the traditional institution; they merely package it in a new way," the architects wrote.

OMA's vision was to redefine the library as no longer exclusively dedicated to books but as more of an information store, where all media can be presented. "In an age where information can be accessed anywhere, it is the simultaneity of all media and the professionalism of their presentation and interaction that will make the library new," OMA wrote.

LIBRARY AWARDS

Seattle's new Central Library has won various awards, including the American Institute of Architects 2005 Honor Award, the American Council of Engineering Companies' 2005 Platinum Award for Innovation and Engineering and achieved a silver rating from the US Green Building Council.