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In This Issue September+October 2018 Volume 9, Issue 52
Life in the Trees
A leader in the industry, ArtisTree constructs everything from luxury treehouse resorts to tiny homes.
PAGE 88
Eye for Design
The Tianjin Binhai library breaks the mold with terraced bookshelves and a spherical auditorium.
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Smarter Shades Corradi USA’s shading system created a beautiful and functional outdoor dining space at this hotel restaurant in Maui.
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Lumen Restaurant Beacon Park’s new restaurant is a green cultural hub in downtown Detroit.
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Transforming Urban Spaces
Modern site furnishings by mmcité create unforgettable outdoor areas.
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How Strand Bamboo is Transforming the Flooring Industry Trinity Bamboo’s flooring solutions are durable and sustainable with numerous customization options.
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Table of Contents Sustainable Solutions
Inner Workings
Spaces
20 Real-Life Design
72 Building Better Bridges
94 Transforming Toronto
Enscape’s technology makes three-dimensional virtual reality rendering easier and faster.
46 The New, Improved Door Lock
Hampton Products is reinventing residential locks with wireless-age functionality and convenience in mind.
Backwoods Bridges takes an environmental approach to people-centric bridges and walkways.
Toronto’s sustainability movement is evolving with green retrofits and innovative new builds.
76 Making Clean Water More Accessible
New Mexico State University puts health and hydration first with Elkay’s bottle filling stations.
Approach 104 Boost Your Green Building Career with Training
Portfolio 52 Lincoln Yards
A vast new development is transforming much of Chicago’s riverfront.
Typology 58 Libraries of the Future
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Take a look at how libraries are becoming sustainable sanctuaries worldwide.
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Ecotech courses give a holistic and hands-on approach to sustainable building practices.
Trendsetters 80 Drones are Changing the Way We Build
Technology like 3DR Site Scan is set to improve one of the world’s biggest industries.
84 From Plastic Waste to Window Shades
Mermet USA is taking what was once a hazard to the environment and turning it into shade fabrics capable of reducing energy in buildings.
Plus 12 In Conversation 14 Editors’ Picks 15 Event Preview 16 Defined Design 110 Person of Interest 112 In the Lab
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Editor’s Note Chris Howe What will our future cities look like? It’s a question architects and designers have been asking for years, and some of the answers may surprise you. In cities like Toronto, design teams are looking at ways they can restore and preserve—rather than simply create from scratch. Just look at Evergreen Brick Works (page 99), a vacant brickmaking factory that was repurposed to become a community hub in 2010. More recently, the Kiln Building at the old factory was purchased by Evergreen Brick Works, LGA Architectural Partners, and others in an effort to transform it into the home of a new Canadian city-building initiative. Preservation of the space was paramount, though, and infrastructure add-ons to the space have been small. Evergreen has even worked to preserve much of the building’s graffiti. In this issue, we also explore some of the latest in inspiring architecture, including some projects that raised eyebrows before ground was even broken. In our office’s own corner of Chicago, Lincoln Yards (page 52) is set to transform more than 50 acres along the riverfront near the Bucktown and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. It’s a project some say is long overdue in an area of known brownfields. In Miami, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science (page 50) is a striking design that engages visitors while not taking away from its natural surroundings. The fourbuilding campus has an aquarium, planetarium, and science museum, but also preserves a view
to Biscayne Bay and capitalizes on the breezes funneling between the museum’s buildings. In an interview with our writer Lauren Bell, architect Vincent Chang says Grimshaw Architects paid careful attention to how the spaces integrated with the environment. “The visitor is not only learning about science and local ecologies, but as they walk through the museum they understand the building, the institution is quite literally in and of the city,” he says. “They see the physical environments from every walkway and exterior path. The views of Miami and the ocean and the prevailing winds coming off the water are just as much a part of the museum as the physical architecture itself.” Sincerely,
Chris Howe, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
ON THE COVER D R O N E S A R E R E V O LU T I O N I Z I N G T H E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N D U S T R Y P G . 8 0
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Lumen, a new restaurant in downtown Detroit, features sapele mahogany wood and a green roof.
Photo by Jason Keen
CORRECTION In the July/August issue of gb&d, contact information for Flex Lighting Solutions should have been listed as: 913.851.3000, flexlightingsolutions.com.
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Publisher’s Note Laura Heidenreich
gb&d Green Building & Design gbdmagazine.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Christopher Howe ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
Laura Heidenreich
MANAGING EDITOR
Laura Rote
In this issue of gb&d, we talk a lot about bringing people together— especially in the great outdoors. From pedestrian walkways by Backwoods Bridges (page 72) to modern site furnishings that encourage people to sit and stay awhile, the September/October magazine explores a number of solutions for getting people outside. The Czech Republic–based company mmcité (page 34) designs beautiful street furniture like benches and tables that make people want to go outside, while also offering the latest must-have features like USB charge ports and even LED under-lighting. For the cofounders of mmcité, it was important to design the kind of flexible, innovative offerings that you might expect to see at a museum, but for the public. “To design something for a public space is much more important than to design some high-end product dedicated to only a few people,” Chief Designer David Karasek told our managing editor, Laura Rote. “We can affect people who are not just typical visitors of galleries. We can influence them through design.”
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We also recently talked to ArtisTree (page 88) to see how connecting people with nature is part of their mission. Will Beilharz founded the company in 2012 after years of people asking if they could stay in the trees as part of his zip line business in Austin, Texas. Today the company has built everything from eco-friendly and luxury treehouse-style lodging to tiny homes. “We are using regenerative design, architecture, and hospitality to help preserve and conserve legacy pieces of land,” Beilharz told our writer, Colleen DeHart. “We want people to be able to access these pieces of land and to have wonderful, amazing, restorative nature experiences.” The commitment to sustainability doesn’t stop with new projects, though. Companies like Mermet USA (page 84) are looking at how they can take back hazardous materials from waterways and shorelines and turn those into something needed—window shade solutions—all while reducing energy. It’s all part of Mermet’s new “Weaving Change” initiative, which connects groups like architects, businesses, and environmental organizations to mobilize behind a shared commitment to conservation with efforts like shoreline cleanups. In September 2018, Mermet volunteers will participate in what’s called a U-Turn cleanup operation alongside environmental nonprofit Winyah Rivers Foundation. It’s the first U-Turn event of many, as the company plans to collaborate with other companies in the window shading and building design industry on cleanups.
Sincerely,
ART DIRECTOR
Kristina Walton Zapata ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Julia Stone
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE
Julie Veternick
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER
Brianna Wynsma
ACCOUNT MANAGERS
Briagenn Adams, Ciara Gomez, Christian Van Epps EDITORIAL INTERN
Lauren Bell
GRAPHIC DESIGNER INTERN
Katherine Pach
CONTRIBUTORS
Brian Barth, Christine Birkner, Rachel Coon, Colleen DeHart, Kira Gould, Kate Griffith, Zack Harold, Russ Klettke, Cheryl Maletich, Margaret Poe, Sarah Treleaven, Maia Welbel EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Anthony Brower, Gensler; Jason F. McLennan, International Living Future Institute MAIL
Green Building & Design 1765 N. Elston Ave., Suite 202B Chicago, IL 60642 Printed in the USA. © 2018 by Green Advocacy Partners, LLC. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for product claims and representations. The Green Building & Design logo is a registered trademark of Green Advocacy Partners, LLC. Green Building & Design (gb&d magazine is printed in the United States using only soy-based inks. Please recycle this magazine. The magazine is also available in digital formats at gbdmagazine.com/current-issue.
Green Building & Design is a certified B Corp. B Corp is to business what Fair Trade certification is to coffee or USDA Organic certification is to milk. B Corps are certified by the nonprofit BLab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
Laura Heidenreich, Associate Publisher
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Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Punch List
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12 In Conversation The global sustainability strategist at Adobe discusses renewable energy in the tech industry.
14 Editors’ Picks Curated by gb&d staff
15 Event Preview Glassbuild, Metalcon, and the North American Passive House Conference are happening soon.
16 Defined Design Find out what makes Sheetz healthy, efficient, and green.
20 Sustainable Solutions Explore virtual reality renderings, versatile metal wall panels, modern site furnishings, and more.
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In Conversation Vince Digneo The software maker Adobe leads a movement to foster unprecedented cooperation in Silicon Valley—for the planet’s sake.
By Brian Barth
Tech companies are known for fierce competition—market dominance depends largely on who can produce the most disruptive gadgets or software first. Trade secrets are closely guarded. Poaching talent from each other by dangling lavish employee benefits and other perks is par for the course. Sometimes “winning” involves a hostile takeover or two of a competitor. But there should always be one office in the C-suite, says Vince Digneo, global sustainability strategist at Adobe, where friendly chats with your counterparts at other companies is the norm. In his view, sustainability goals are much more easily attained through cooperation, rather than competition. “Winning” in this case, of course, is about having a habitable planet for future generations, not the stakeholders’ bottom lines. Digneo offers renewable energy production as a case in point. The more companies that band together to purchase alternative power in a given energy market, the more likely that alternative power suppliers will reach the scale needed to offer their product at a cost-competitive rate. Which is why in March this year, Adobe partnered with Facebook on the tech industry’s first aggregated purchase of wind energy, from Enel Green Power, for a new data center site in Nebraska. In March last year, Adobe signed a 2.5-megawatt grid-scale solar power purchase agreement for the company’s Bangalore, India location. It was a major step toward the company’s 2035 goal of 100% renewable energy. In an interview with gb&d, Digneo explains why Adobe no longer touts being carbon neutral—which the company achieved years ago through the purchase of carbon offsets—in favor of a strategy that will eventually result in cleaner energy grids in the regions where the company is physically located. If the entire tech industry gets onboard with this approach, he says, renewable energy stands a much better chance of reaching scale in time to avert full-on global warming catastrophe.
gb&d: How did your journey to sustainability strategist evolve? Digneo: I’m originally from Santa Fe, a very outdoor community. When I came to graduate school in California, I got into running, swimming, and cycling—all that stuff. In the ’90s I helped start the Leukemia Lymphoma Society team and training program; I coached athletes to run marathons to raise money for cancer research. Around the same time I was working in a lab at Stanford that focused on cancer research. Then I worked for HP Labs building the scientific instruments that enable people to find cures. But it turns out a lot of that technology revolves around a supply chain full of carcinogenic chemicals. gb&d: Sounds like a case of one step forward, one step back. Digneo: If something is good for human health, chances are it’s good for the environment. If you can do things that are good for human health and the environment, you’re subject to lower risk, and you’re subject to a better reputation. If you can eliminate harmful substances from your supply chain, you have a cleaner waste stream, which means you save money. I started to put all these things together 20 years ago, and it’s followed me throughout my entire career. gb&d: How have you brought that perspective to bear at Adobe? Digneo: It’s a little different here at Adobe because we don’t have a physical supply chain; it’s digital. Since I got here in 2013, Adobe has transitioned from boxed software products to become a completely “clouded” business. All of our products are low carbon; they’re all data center-driven. The transition from a physical supply chain to a digital supply chain has reduced our customer’s environmental impact by 90%. gb&d: Technology companies play a big role in sustainability. What might other industries find surprising? Digneo: If you look at our peers like Google and Apple, we don’t compete with them on products—we compete with them for talent. In order to recruit and retain talent you have to This conversation continues on p. 15
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Editors’ Picks Curated by gb&d staff
PRODUCT EXTREMECONCRETE Not used to seeing “concrete” and “green” in the same sentence? Extremeconcrete is a sustainable, high-performance concrete made of materials that would otherwise be bound for the waste stream, like post-consumer glass, shredded plastic, and silicon byproducts. Extremeconcrete tiles can be molded into any shape, too. Choose the web-like Krono tile pattern to add texture to a room or create a smooth, durable surface for commercial spaces with modern Fourell tiles. mergedesignco.com
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ORGANIZATION FIFTH AVENUE COMPANY (FAC) This Brooklyn organization is making solar energy more accessible for everyone. Fifth Avenue Company (FAC) is launching the Solar Project for Affordable Housing in collaboration with Gowanus Grid Electric to provide affordable energy to low-income families who are living in FAC buildings. The organization is also piloting a Solar Installation Workforce Development Training Program, helping build a workforce for future solar energy installations. fifthave.org
COMPANY ELKWOOD 3D printing isn’t just for tech professionals. Home goods company Elkwood is designing heritage inspired pieces made from 3D printed materials, seamlessly integrating classic design with modern technology. Hang postcards or artwork on Elkwood’s oak Rakke display rail or combine design elements with the Hoc hook accessory to store keys. You’ll want to drape your coats and bags on the sturdy but elegant Henge coat hanger. And you can even grow succulents in the tiny 3D printed planter called Groa. elkwood.co
TECHNOLOGY IRIS VIRTUAL REALITY You can experience 3D design before it’s created with Iris Virtual Reality. This new interface invites architects, engineers, planners, and designers to see their products in space, communicate their vision to clients, and even correct for errors without physically building a single thing. The Scope feature also renders panoramas of any 3D space that can be easily sent to clients so they can view them on their mobile phones. irisvr.com
COMPANY FARMERY INDOOR FARMS With Farmery Indoor Farms, you can minimize the distance your food travels down to just a few feet before it arrives on your plate. These modular units grow plants on shelves with LED lights that mimic sunlight conditions. Custom tints keep pests away and provide a more subtle look. Users can control growing conditions on a smartphone app, which sends alerts when action is needed. thefarmery.com
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PHOTO: COURTESY OF ELKWOOD
Elkwood creates simple pieces for your home using 3D printed materials.
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Event Preview Fall 2018 By Maia Welbel
IN CONVERSATION with Vince Digneo Continued from p. 13
be good at the sustainability stuff. There have to be things for employees to participate in. gb&d: You’re a big advocate of cooperating with other tech companies on sustainability. How does that work? Digneo: We have a really excellent peer group. For example, Kate Brandt [Google’s sustainability officer] is a good friend of mine; we talk all the time. We leverage best practices, we learn from each other. I love it. Also, look at where we live: all these businesses are just a few miles from each other. We are in the same ecosystem. gb&d: I take it you don’t mean the tech ecosystem, you mean the actual ecosystem. Digneo: That’s right. We share the same air, the same water, the same electrical grid. That’s why we need to collaborate.
GLASSBUILD AMERICA DETAILS Explore the latest advancements in the glass, When September 12–14 window, and door industries this September at Where Las Vegas, NV GlassBuild America, where hundreds of exhibitors come Web glassbuildamerica. together to share and learn about the most innovative com technologies in the glass and fenestration space. Educational forums and product showcases provide opportunities to network and enhance your glass business. Exhibitors from manufacturing to retailing and everything in between will bring a wide range of products and services for participants to experience.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF GLASSBUILD AMERICA
METALCON DETAILS Metalcon 2018 will take place this year in CharWhen October 10-12 lotte, as metal professionals from all over the industry Where Charlotte, NC will gather to try out new products, talk to experts, and Web metalcon.com even participate in the “Metal Roofing Championship Games.” Speakers will address business strategies specific to the metal industry, and construction experts will provide hands-on training. With more than 800 booths, Metalcon is the largest international event dedicated to metal construction.
North American Passive House Conference DETAILS Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) is working to When September 19-23 make high-performance passive building mainWhere Boston stream. This year, the organization will host the 13th Web phius.org Annual North American Passive House Conference, where innovators and activists share strategies and solutions for climate-specific zero energy design, construction, and building science. Learn about the latest technological developments in energy-efficient building, hear from policy experts, and meet industry leaders designing for a super energy-efficient future. PHIUS also offers workshops and trainings leading up to the conference. gb&d
gb&d: Digital products have a low carbon footprint. But every business still has a physical presence—how is Adobe greening its real estate portfolio? Digneo: Adobe is a highly evolved company in that arena. More than 70% of our employees work in LEED-certified workspaces. Our entire 1-million-square-foot campus in San Jose is LEED Platinum. Our building at 601 Townsend in San Francisco is the oldest LEED Platinum building on earth— built in 1905 and renovated in 2007. gb&d: How is progress on reducing the carbon footprint of your data centers? Digneo: We have a data center in Oregon that was sited in a certain area precisely because they have a clean hydropower grid. It’s rare for a company our size to have its own data center—most of ours are co-located with other companies, like the Facebook project in Nebraska. That came about because I talk to my colleagues there all the time, I know where they’re putting their data centers, and I know they have the same renewable energy objectives we do. It’s in a location with a traditional heavy coal grid, so it’s going to help reduce emissions. gb&d: That’s the nice thing about data centers—you can put them anywhere. Digneo: Exactly. Facebook is evaluating new This conversation continues on p. 17
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Condensing Hydronic Boiler Stainless-steel firetube boilers. Flue gases are drawn through a secondary heat exchanger that is in contact with the cooler return water, which causes the water vapor in the flue gases to condense. This change of state allows for additional heat to be removed from the flue gases before it exits out the flue. This type of boiler is rated at 95% efficiency. Standard hydronic boilers are noncondensing and typically have an efficiency of 82%.
Defined Design Sheetz, Inc. By Maia Welbel CDI Studio One, the architecture division of L.R. Kimball, designed a new 115,000-square-foot operations support center for convenience store giant Sheetz, Inc. in Claysburg, Pennsylvania with an eye toward sustainability and promoting a healthy, collaborative work environment. Water-saving plumbing fixtures, LED lighting with occupancy sensors, high-efficiency condensing boilers, and accommodations for large-scale recycling minimize wasted energy and resources while expansive natural light, reclaimed wood walls, and the preservation of the surrounding wetlands create a bright and comfortable space for employees. Aiming to provide a holistic workplace experience for the Sheetz community, CDI designed an independent pavilion dining room that extends into the lawn and a large, southernfacing glazed porch that allows employees to experience nature throughout the workday. The campus also includes a childcare center for children of Sheetz employees. “This building is phenomenal; we are so happy to add it to what we can now call a campus,” says CEO Joe Sheetz. gb&d
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IN CONVERSATION with Vince Digneo Continued from p. 15
Continuous Insulation Insulation designed to avoid thermal bridging. When metal is used to connect the exterior components of a building directly to the interior framing, this causes a thermal bridge. This thermal path of least resistance allows heat (or cold) to escape, creating a vulnerability for cold spots and allowing moisture problems. Using materials that eliminate the thermal bridge helps to avoid unnecessary heating and cooling costs.
spots all the time for data centers and part of that is finding a place where they can agree on a fixed price for 100% renewable. It’s motivating states like Nebraska to install more wind turbines, which not only adds renewable energy to the grid, it creates jobs and brings the price of clean energy down for everyone. gb&d: Tell us about your choice to focus on renewable energy. Digneo: When I came to Adobe in 2013, the company was already carbon neutral. But that didn’t mean they were buying renewable energy—they were buying carbon offsets. The thing is—offsets don’t put renewable energy on the local grid. We could say our buildings were carbon neutral, but that elementary school down the road? It’s not. Yet we’re only separated by a few blocks. This makes no sense. So I killed the offset program. gb&d: How do you define “100% renewable?” Digneo: To me 100% renewable energy means no purchase of “unbundled” RECs (renewable energy credits)—we don’t want to greenwash our way through this. We want to put renewable energy on the grids where we work and live. And by not buying offsets, we have more resources to put into decarbonizing the grid. I’m committed to doing everything I can to achieve that. gb&d: What progress have you made?
High Efficiency Commercial Water Heater System that raises water temperature with minimal energy loss. The Lochinvar Shield highefficiency sealed-combustion commercial water heaters were selected for the Sheetz campus because of their ability to sustain 96% thermal efficiency over the lifetime of the equipment. These heaters have no flue tubes inside the tank, instead the water is heated in a separate stainless-steel heat exchanger. By controlling and creating high-water velocity through the heat exchanger, the heat surface areas are kept clean so thermal efficiency remains high for the life of the water heater.
Digneo: Our first step was in Bangalore, India. The load we are purchasing comes direct from a solar farm about 140 kilometers from our site there. It covers 100% of our load on one of the dirtiest coal-based grids on earth. The problem is, we will never see an electron of that in California. A lot of policy and advocacy work is needed to make similar things happen here, which is why our renewable energy goal is for 2035. It’s not going to be overnight like buying offsets. We need time to do it right. gb&d: What gives you hope? Digneo: I just finished doing the math of our carbon footprint last year. What I found is that in a year in which we increased our revenue by 25%, increased our workforce by 14%, and our stock price rose 83%, our carbon footprint remained the same. I’m talking about absolute emissions—before factoring in any renewable energy. That’s something special. gb&d
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Real-Life Design Enscape makes virtual reality rendering easier than ever before. By Zack Harold
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Not long ago, creating a virtual reality rendering of a building was a long, arduous process. Architecture firms had to enlist the help of programmers to create the environments with special software usually used by video game designers. The process would take weeks. By the time the renderings were finished, they would often be out-of-date because the design process had since moved on. Enter Enscape. Founders Moritz Luck and Thomas Schander wanted to find a way to take VR rendering for architects and make it faster. “We looked at the market and there was nothing there,” Luck says. So they began developing their own software, rolling out a beta version in 2015. Their product didn’t just make virtual reality faster, though. It made it instantaneous. Enscape is designed to work as an extension of common modeling programs Autodesk Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, and ArchiCAD. Users click one button and, in a few seconds, can see a threedimensional virtual reality rendering of their designs. “You don’t have to learn a new program,” Luck says. “It’s easy. And it looks good.” This helps designers communicate better with customers, who probably don’t have much experience looking at floorplans. Luck says it’s especially useful in
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Using geolocation, the program allows users to adjust the time of day and year to see how sunlight comes through windows. It’s even possible to factor in shadows from other buildings. It’s not as precise as other methods but provides a quick and easy-tounderstand reference. “That’s something you can very easily see in VR that’s very hard to tell in a floorplan in 2D,” Luck says.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ENSCAPE
helping customers envision large, open, multistory spaces like atriums and lobbies. “In 3D, you can grasp it.” Clever Collaboration But more than communicating with clients, Enscape helps designers communicate better with one another. Even looking at the same exact blueprints, it’s not uncommon for designers to come away with different mental images. Enscape removes the ambiguity. San Antonio, Texas–based design firm Overland Partners had worked with other VR before but found the process long and difficult. Then Overland’s Director of Technology Daniel Carpio and BIM Manager Steve Fong stumbled across Enscape. They were impressed but skeptical at first of the company’s claims of realtime renderings, so they downloaded a demo. “We could not believe what we were seeing,” Carpio says. “It was doing everything it said and more.” The software has changed the way Overland works. “If you go into our office now, everybody has two monitors,” says Overland Principal Bob Shemwell. One will show a design in Revit, while the other will feature an Enscape rendering of that design. “It would be impossible to walk through the office and not see somebody working on Enscape.”
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Bringing Design to Life The renderings really come alive, however, when connected with a virtual reality headset. Not long ago, Shemwell and Ben Rosas, Overland designer, were in a hotel lounge in Florida, gearing up for a presentation on a botanical garden Overland is designing. Rosas was tweaking the renderings as Shemwell wore a headset, offering him feedback. Then a line began to form. “The next thing you know we have the hotel desk clerk and a line of random people we didn’t know that we are walking through the model,” Shemwell says. “It’s technology, but, ultimately, it’s about people.” Enscape’s ease of use and quality renderings are quickly making the software an industry standard. The program is now used by many of the world’s top architecture firms and the company is growing so fast they’ve had to find new office space. Luck says they hired an architect to design the new space, an old-school guy who was skeptical about the whole 3D thing. Then, as plans were being finalized, the architect realized there was a huge column smack in the middle of the room. “In 3D, it would have been clear from the start,” Luck laughs. These are five things you can do using Enscape.
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Using Enscape, architects can spot problems in their plans that wouldn’t otherwise be evident. On a recent project, Overland designers and engineers switched to an Enscape VR session and noticed a duct was poking through a wall. The problem was not evident in Revit, but in VR the error was as plain as day.
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Enscape releases new versions of its software every three months, often with new features voted on by users on the company’s online forum. Based on this feedback, Luck says the company hopes to roll out virtual reality renderings for smartphones, tablets, and internet browsers. Enscape also plans to allow users to alter design elements from within the virtual reality environment.
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Although the firm still uses physical models and sketches when presenting projects to customers or other stakeholders, Overland has started to incorporate virtual reality into its promotional materials. At one recent meeting with city leaders, the company used Enscape to create QR codes linked to 360 panoramas of a nearby building so everyone could see how the soon-to-bebuilt structure would look from various vantage points. The firm plans to place QR codes on fencing surrounding the construction site, so passersby can see what’s coming and get excited.
5 PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ENSCAPE
Many users view Enscape renderings on a computer screen but, for a really immersive experience, virtual reality headsets are the way to go. “You have to curate the experience for the client so they don’t feel like they’re going to look foolish,” Shemwell says. When clients feel comfortable, the payoffs are great. Carpio says, “When they take the headset off, there is a sense of euphoria and joy. They finally have a clear understanding of the reality of their project.” gb&d
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A New Angle Apex Farms aims to transform the world of agriculture with vertical farming.
By Mikenna Pierotti Imagine an agricultural world where feeding the more than seven billion people on our planet didn’t deplete fresh water resources, didn’t force impoverished communities to tear down rainforest to plant crops, and didn’t bankrupt farmers and push generations of families off the lands of their ancestors in search of a better life. Lofty goals, yes, but entrepreneur and founder of Wilmington, Delaware–based, Apex Farms Corp, Alex Leo, is convinced, with the right technology and the right mindset, we’ll get there. And with his revolutionary take on vertical farming, he’s poised to help us move the needle. What’s so revolutionary about his vertical farming systems? Leo says it’s partly the simplicity. “We’ve been marketing our solutions as vertical farming systems for hydroponics and aquaponics use, both outdoor and indoor. In times past, you couldn’t have that capability without investing in multiple, complex products.” In other words, vertical farming systems weren’t always hydroponic. Hydroponic systems couldn’t necessarily do aquaponics. And often, all of these systems required specially designed, costprohibitive facilities, complex pump systems, and a host of trained staff to run and monitor it all. Add to that the fact that many of the vertical farming systems that were designed for outdoor use didn’t allow adequate light distribution to all plants in the system, and you have the makings of a technology with many potential drawbacks. The Problem For the modern farmer, already strapped for cash and time, vertical farming often isn’t an option, Leo says. When farmers do take on the investment of such a system, they are often forced into a selective and highly competitive market, where only immature crops such as micro-greens and specialty plants yield the returns they need to stay in business. “For a lot of these systems, a farmer would need a special facility, different workers, a
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UP FRONT
The triangle shape allows sunlight to hit all plants in the system evenly.
new business model, a million dollars to invest, and, oh yeah, six months to wait while the whole system comes online with no money coming in,” he says. “The questions we started with were: How can we get nearly any full-sized crop to maturity with vertical technology in an efficient way that would work even for entry-level commercial and residential customers? And how can we use the same premise of hydroponics and vertical farming technology, which looks to save on water, space, electricity, and other resources, but make it as efficient and attainable as possible?” The Solution The answer hinged on designing a simple, costeffective vertical farming system that could be used indoors or out to grow nearly any plant. To do that Leo made use of an ancient technology—the triangle. This shape allowed sunlight to hit all plants in the system evenly, no matter the environment, while saving space and, with the system being closer to the ground, making harvesting easier. And rather than incorporating multiple pumps as many other systems do, Leo simplified the technology, adding just one special pump. “We chose what’s called a sewage station, which has a grinder on it that will break up anything that’s in the water. That was because we wanted to be able to supply aquaponics, which are systems that include fish and use the waste from the fish as fertilizer for the plants.” Over three years of research, development, and testing, Leo added other simple features, like turn stop valves on each channel, which prevent leaks from shutting down the entire system, and space for farmers to add water sensors to monitor their water’s parameters. Most recently, Leo and Rob White, vice president of prefabrication, have been working on making the system completely collapsible and mobile, so the entire system can be constructed and deconstructed with simple tools. “We wanted to make a system that could be up quickly and operational for a long duration of time without really much hassle or need for updating,” Leo says. “The solution was simple and elegant.” Thinking Outside the Box That solution made perfect sense to Shay Thompson, Apex Farms’ first customer, when he overheard Leo discussing his systems at a local grocery store. “I’d been doing a lot of research on different side businesses I could get into. I looked into growing produce for the local farmers’ market. But when I
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PHOTOS: COURTESY OF APEX FARMS CORP.
WHY THIS MATTERS Approximately 37% of land on Earth is used for growing food, and yet nearly 13% of the world’s population remains undernourished. Vertical farming aims to solve the problem. While traditional farming is costly—expensive equipment plus labor—solutions like Apex Farming save time and money. The Apex Vertical Farming system has been tested across three years to reduce the water usage both indoors and outdoors by more than 85%. You can use the Apex System indoors or out, and it has the ability to grow everything but trees.
looked into hydroponics, it was all pretty much indoors. And I don’t have the space for that, so I had pretty much given up on the idea,” Thompson says. Leo quickly sold Thompson on the concept of being able to grow nearly any type of produce to meet the needs of his local community (and himself) by installing a small, 10-foot residential system on his property. “You can put it out in the middle of nowhere. The system doesn’t require any regular land. You could put it on asphalt, concrete, desert— the top of a skyscraper. [Leo] even talked about the possibility of using solar panels to power it. You really could do this off-grid. That’s the kind of thing I’m into,” Thompson says. Leo says that although the system itself is revolutionary, and has potentially far-reaching implications, he has far bigger plans for the company as a whole. “What we’re ultimately looking to do is to become a segue between all the aspects of farming,” Leo says. “If a farmer doesn’t want to worry about the business or marketing aspect of the industry, if they just want to wholesale their products and not worry about finding buyers or retailers, if they don’t want to worry about marketing, we want to eventually be able to step in and do all that for them. We want to be a hub for farmers.” Leo also hopes to branch into education, helping school systems and state governments set up training programs to help introduce the next generation to farming and entrepreneurism as a viable career. For Leo, a young entrepreneur himself, the issue is vital. “Our company can’t tackle all these issues all on our own, but we can start to connect these problems with solutions—sustainable farming, environmental issues, the decline of farming around the world—that’s the idea.” gb&d september–october 2018
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
7 Reasons Steel Conduit is Best for Your Building The Steel Tube Institute shows us why this electrical raceway option is the most cost effective and long-lasting.
When a group of manufacturers joined forces in 1930, they had one goal as they created the Steel Tube Institute (STI)—to promote and market the utility and versatility of steel tubing. Nearly 100 years later, that remains their primary goal—to improve manufacturing processes and inform those within the industry of the advantages of building with steel tubing. As a trade association operating as a nonprofit, The Steel Tube Institute consists of several member companies along with five product committees and various task forces working to address safety, technical, and manufacturing questions as well as sponsor applicable research and software for
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industry engineers and electricians. One product the institute stands behind is steel conduit, a versatile wiring method most commonly used for electrical raceways transferring power, data, and communications throughout commercial, residential, and industrial buildings. “You know the ‘got milk’ campaign for American dairy farmers? Well, we’re the ‘got milk’ for steel conduit,” explains Dale Crawford, the institute’s director of steel conduit who works closely with the companies within STI’s steel conduit division—Allied Tube & Conduit, Republic Conduit, Western Tube & Conduit, and Wheatland Tube. Though there are cabling options,
which have their place, but are typically installed in a fixed configuration that is not easily replaced. Some other solutions that utilize nonmetallic raceways also produce toxic fumes when burned, leading to additional concerns. Meanwhile, the three types of steel conduit used today—rigid metal conduit (RMC), intermediate metal conduit (IMC), and electrical metallic tubing (EMT)—are, well, made of steel, a noncombustible, crush-resistant material that will last (or outlast) the lifespan of any building. “There’s nothing quite as strong or quite as resilient,” Crawford says. “That’s why steel conduit has been the go-to wiring method for well over 100 years.” gbdmagazine.com
PHOTOS, THIS PAGE AND NEXT: COURTESY OF STEEL TUBE INSTITUTE
By Rachel Coon
UP FRONT
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MONEY TALKS
Steel conduit saves—from the cost of installation throughout the life of a building. “What often isn’t, but needs to be, considered is the full life cycle cost of a building,” says Crawford. When it comes to new construction, steel conduit does not require a ground wire to enhance the safety of the installation, meaning budgeting for additional conductors is unnecessary. Plus, due to steel conduit’s flexibility and reusability, even as a building changes drastically over the years, conduit electrical raceways can be left in place, saving you the recurring expense of replacing cabling as the building evolves.
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100 YEARS NEW
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THE WORLD’S MOST RECYCLED MATERIAL
The recognition of steel conduit’s resiliency is a modern and positive trend. For a century, steel conduit has been an industry go-to, thanks to its superior protection against physical damage. But as we face greater natural and manmade disasters, building a stronger infrastructure is increasingly important—and steel conduit is the perfect electrical raceway because it allows for wiring to be removed, changed, updated, and for the raceway to be reused, something that’s generally not feasible with cabling methods. The conduit raceway can even be flushed out and cleaned, if necessary in cases involved flooding, in preparation for new wiring to be installed. “While steel conduit may be the old product that’s been around 100+ years, in reality, it might be the product of the future,” Crawford says.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF STEEL TUBE INSTITUTE
The longevity and reusability of steel conduit supports sustainable building practices. Steel can be recycled endlessly and used for nearly any purpose. “The sustainability of steel conduit comes with the recyclability of steel itself,” Crawford says. Steel conduit also helps reduce environmental impact with its long service life (some RMC has been in use for more than 60 years) and ability to accommodate new conductors and additional circuits— allowing raceways to be reused over time.
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
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UP TO CODE
Steel conduit is allowed everywhere. The National Electric Code implements rigorous restrictions on all types of materials, but steel conduit has always been allowed everywhere. “As buildings get bigger and more complex and it becomes more difficult to protect occupants, other wiring methods are more restricted by the NEC while steel conduit is allowed literally any place while also providing the best protection,” says Joe Andre, STI technical consultant.
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HANDLES THE HEAT
Made of noncombustible material, steel conduit protects against fire and explosions. For any place in a building that fire could reach, steel conduit is easy to install, provides additional protection against fire damage, and will not burn. “There are methods for making the alternatives safe in a fire, but those options are more expensive and time-consuming,” Andre says. In locations like gas stations or grain elevators with high explosion risks, RMC and IMC steel conduit protects conductors so they don’t become a source of ignition.
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IMMUNE TO THE ELEMENTS
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IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY
To meet industry standards and NEC requirements, steel conduit has to be provided with corrosion protection. Steel rusts. So steel conduit goes through several preventative processes, such as zinc galvanizing and conversion coatings, to ensure extreme elements won’t cause rapid deterioration. “Manufacturers want their product to be long-performing, so they go to great lengths to ensure steel conduit is protected against corrosion,” Andre says.
PHOTOS, THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS: COURTESY OF STEEL TUBE INSTITUTE
Because of its steel construction, steel conduit can protect highly sensitive data from electromagnetic interference. Just imagine the banking information whizzing through electrical circuits or the cables powering the monitors or other sensitive equipment in an operating room—all of that information travels through wiring and electrical raceways. “Whenever you’re dealing with wiring or electrical equipment, there’s potential for electromagnetic interference (EMI),” Crawford says. Steel conduit’s superior protection against EMI will protect whatever data or equipment that is currently in service in your building now, or that will be at any point in the building’s future. gb&d
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The Chicago Amendment Though steel conduit is not typically used in residential construction, it’s actually required in Chicago homes. Steel conduit is most commonly used in commercial and industrial building projects, however, on the residential level, non-metallic cable is more widely used. But there is one oddity within the U.S. residential construction market—the Chicago metro area. The Chicago Electric Code makes amendments to the National Electric Code that requires steel conduit raceways in all homes. So while most homes in, say, Colorado, California, or Georgia are likely to utilize nonmetallic wiring, Chicago uses conduit. Because of conduit’s ability to be reused, this means a home that is undergoing renovations in Chicago can have wiring replaced in an afternoon, while those same houses in other states across the United States will likely be pulling and replacing drywall and finishings for significantly longer.
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
REASONS METAL WALL PANELS ARE A SMART CHOICE ALPOLIC Materials is helping engineers and architects create better buildings. By Christine Birkner
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The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Headquarters used a majority of metal composite material with a natural zinc finish.
PHOTOS, THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS: COURTESY OF ALPOLIC
AS ARCHITECTS SEEK MORE VARIETY and sustainable building materials, metal wall panels made from recycled aluminum offer a solution. When it comes to green—and versatile—options, ALPOLIC, the world’s leading manufacturer of aluminum and metal composite materials manufactured from up to 50% recycled materials, is leading the way. Produced by Mitsubishi Chemical Composites America, ALPOLIC Materials is helping engineers and architects create better, more beautiful buildings. Jim Moses, technical services manager at ALPOLIC, points to the Maricopa County Sherriff’s Office Headquarters in Phoenix, which used a majority of metal composite material with a natural zinc finish, as one key example where an architect had a grand idea and was able to realize it using the product.
SEE TO TAL E PAG F ME HE O N T EFITS ELS. R TU EN PAN B L THE WAL
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They’re versatile.
If you’re looking for a lot of finish looks in a product line that’s easy to work with from a construction point of view, ALPOLIC is an obvious choice, Moses says. ALPOLIC materials are lighter in weight, easier to fabricate into complex forms, and easier to install than traditional materials, while still offering flatness, durability, stability, vibration damping, and ease of maintenance.
With almost 80 stock colors as well as a wide selection of glosses and finishes like wood, stone, and prismatics, plus the typical micas and metallics, and the ability to specify custom colors, you can match ALPOLIC materials to virtually any color or finish. For instance, Butler Tech Bioscience Center in Ohio made good use of the material’s flexibility and color options by using contrasting colors in ALPOLIC’s metal panels coated in Valspar’s Valflon.
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They’re cost-efficient.
ALPOLIC is a lower-cost way to clad what otherwise would be an ordinary building and make it stand out. For instance, auto dealers often use ALPOLIC panels to freshen up their buildings and make them look bright, shiny, and new. “The versatility of the types of buildings you can clad is one of the hallmarks—you don’t have the issues found with plate or more fragile cladding alternatives,” Moses says. ALPOLIC also offers special trim touches and shimmer or effect finishes to accent an entryway or window wall. Kraig Kessel, cofounder of design firm Kraido, developed a prototypical look for chains like Jiffy Lube using ALPOLIC. “From the building aspect, I need brand integrity to be maintained over time,” he says. “It has to last, and it has to be uniform. ALPOLIC is not going to corrode or fade and will look just as good on day 2,000 as it does on day one.”
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PHOTOS, THIS PAGE AND NEXT: COURTESY OF ALPOLIC
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They have multiple color and finish options.
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They’re sustainable.
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Quality control is on point.
Kessel loves working with ALPOLIC because of the company’s dedication to service, seeing him through projects like the one he did with Jiffy Lube. “We had some pushback, initially, and ALPOLIC was there to get us through it. I can’t stress the service dimension enough. If there’s an issue, they’ll be all over it,” he says. “Their facility is so clean you can eat off the floor. I was intrigued by their level of quality control—they’re looking at coating, looking for imperfections. You get checkpoints on multiple dimensions, and if there’s ever an issue, they’re there to solve it.” gb&d
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ALPOLIC
ALPOLIC keeps its footprint as small as possible, recycling the excess paint as well as the aluminum and core materials. It also publishes a material ingredient report to ensure the materials won’t cause environmental issues. The company has a commitment to lead-free coatings, with a fire-retardant core in the panels that’s good for the environment and human health and wellness. Its recycling program, Encore, reclaims metals and reuses materials from previous projects. ALPOLIC’s dedication to sustainability is also expressed through its Kaiteki Institute, established in 2009 by Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation with the aim of realizing kaiteki, a sustainable condition that’s comfortable for people, society, and the earth (“kaiteki” is the Japanese word for comfortable). The institute is focused on finding solutions to various environmental, energy, water and food, and health care challenges. “The finishes are good for the environment and customer because they last for a long time,” says Rick Harford, ALPOLIC’s manager of sustainability and kaiteki. “We’re trying to make good business decisions that are not only good now, but for decades to come.”
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
Transforming Urban Spaces With Modern Site Furnishings mmcité brings people together with inspiring design in outdoor spaces all over the world. By Laura Rote
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PHOTO: MMCITE
The best street furniture beautifies urban spaces while bringing people together and challenging the norm with high design. At least, that’s the mission of mmcité, the Czech Republic–based company that creates everything from colorful outdoor tables to smart benches that let you charge your phone. mmcité was founded by David Karasek, chief designer and cofounder, alongside cofounder Radek Hegmon in 1994. Together, they and a team of designers and engineers work with renowned architects all over the world to bring clever, engaging concepts to life, whether it’s bus or bicycle shelters, park benches, litter bins, planters, or many other products. Recently, mmcité worked with top landscape architecture and urban design studio DAVID RUBIN Land Collective in the U.S. As part of this partnership, mmcité updated its classic bench, Vera, to have a narrow-wood design, installing approximately 12 benches outside at the new Cummins office in Indianapolis. “The site itself is comprised of many different opportunities to gather,” says David Rubin, Land Collective’s founding principal, noting a high-tech table where you can charge your computer to amphitheater-style seating and movable tables and chairs. The design team worked with mmcité to ensure well-designed, comfortable benches that could accommodate multiple people were also a major part of the project. Karasek says it’s a great example of architecture intersecting with the design of a public space. Even after decades of pushing the design envelope, mmcité continues to transform spaces through: PHOTO: COURTESY OF MMCITÉ
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Flexible Design
PHOTOS: MMCITE
For the Cummins project, mmcité matched the client’s mission and aesthetic with a customization of its Vera benches outside. Inside, employees have open seating and can work where they wish—whether at a standing desk, group table, walking desk, or outside in the fresh air. Rubin says the studio designed the outdoor area in response to the building design by Deborah Berke Partners and Ratio Architects, and mmcité’s offerings were a great fit. “We’re striving to create environments in which the full breadth of citizenry can find themselves engaged with each other and comfortable within any landscape of our creation, so the more variety you offer people the more likely you’re going to capture their attention,” Rubin says. “The more comfortable they are in an environment, the more likely they are to linger and converse with each other.”
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UP FRONT
The portiqoa benches incorporate smart shapes with softly curved sides made of aluminium alloy.
Customizable products
mmcité has a bevy of smart features it’s rolling out, too. The company revealed a prototype solar-powered bench—Woody Solar—in late 2017. The bench uses the sun to power chargers for electronic devices, and it also acts as a WiFi hot spot. “Here in Europe it’s very trendy to be smart,” Karasek says. “Everybody has everything in their smartphones now—your calendar, your communication, all your knowledge is in the smartphone.” Cue panic, then, when phone batteries die. “You should have the possibility to charge your phone, even for a few minutes, in many, many places around the city. That’s why we decided to develop this charging port and use USB. We think it’s practical.” Now more than 10 mmcité products feature USB charge ports, the most in-demand accessory currently. Many products also feature LED underlighting as part of the company’s smartcité line, which Karasek says improves security in public spaces. Plus, these high-design benches include sturdy steel tables, so you have room to spread out and stay awhile. The eBlocq bench is a more experimental product from mmcité that’s also generating excitement. The hardwood bench has six lockable compartments inside, each one fitted with a standard plug socket for charging e-bike batteries or laptops, plus two USB sockets for mobile devices. Each compartment is illuminated and large enough to hold a cycle helmet. “This is a very special bench,” Karasek says. “Nobody else offers this, but we think it’s quite technical and interesting.” For Karasek, the possibilities are endless. “mmcité is not just a supplier of quality pieces of street furniture, but also a partner of all those who wish to create something extraordinary in public space,” he says. “Every city is beautiful; you just need to find and show off that beauty.”
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▼ AS SEEN IN You’ll find mmcité’s work at: 2018 WORLD CUP STADIUM, MOSCOW CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, PARIS CUMMINS OFFICE PARK, INDIANAPOLIS OLYMPIC VILLAGE, RIO DE JANEIRO 8 HOUSE, COPENHAGEN 4BLOK, PRAGUE PHOTOS: COURTESY OF MMCITÉ
Smart Features
mmcité offers a range of materials or custom colors so DAVID RUBIN Land Collective could match their benches to the black locust tables already onsite, for example. “It’s that combination of durability, flexibility, and adaptability that allowed us to select mmcité with greater ease,” Rubin says. The firm also worked with mmcité in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on an Arts Walk project. There, they combined mmcité’s custom and standard furnishings. “One of the pleasures of working with mmcité is that you can customize off-the-shelf work to fit the needs of a specific project,” Rubin says. In Allentown, they modified not just the type of wood and finish—as in Indianapolis—but also added underlighting to the benches. Rubin says, “The result is quite handsome.”
NAVY YARD CORPORATE CENTER, PHILADELPHIA
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The minium litter bin is aesthetically pleasing and highly durable.
Sustainability
Innovation
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF MMCITÉ
“The company is driven by designers,” says Karasek, adding that the mmcité team is large—with 300 people across departments. “But most important for us is the design and creation.” While it may be difficult—or expensive—to keep developing new and exciting products, Karasek says it’s a big part of the company’s mission. He says it may be easier for a company to make something “generic,” but that is not the mmcité way. “Our way is to create, and our way is to be original. People have asked me for years if it’s boring to design for so long in one field. It’s not boring—it’s very exciting for me.” He says mmcité continues to strive to bring strong contemporary design to public spaces. “To design something for a public space is much more important than to design some high-end product dedicated to only a few people,” he says. “We can affect people who are not just typical visitors of galleries. We can influence them through design.” Karasek says mmcité uses the same level of design you’d see in top showrooms, but for the public. “Through very high-end quality design we can change the behavior of people,” he says, adding that a space that’s made well makes people feel cared for.
What goes into mmcité’s materials is important, too, and the company has won numerous awards that show they care—including the GOOD DESIGN Award, which includes environmental sustainability critera, for its Meandre bicycle stand made from flexible rubber, and recognition for its Blocq range of large, wooden benches. Considering materials is even more important when designing for public spaces, Karasek says, because they are one of the most demanding environments. There, you have not only weather to consider but also the issue of ownership—when no one owns a space, user behavior differs and you could face vandals. “We have to consider that as designers, and we have to design all things to be durable,” Karasek says. As such, the range of materials is more limited. “We can use some steel, cast iron, or aluminum, we can use some specific wood if it’s durable enough, but it’s quite difficult. We are continuously looking for new materials that are strong enough for this demanding environment.” mmcité recently began using a new material, Resysta, made of 60% rice husks, 22% common salt, and 18% mineral oil. It’s extremely durable—resisting sun, rain, frost, and even saltwater—and recyclable. And while it looks like wood, it requires minimal maintenance and is highly resistant to pests, mold, and cracks. mmcité’s Vera bench is made in part from this eco-friendly material. Another new and alternative material is High Pressure Laminate (HPL), a durable material that allows for work with very thin boards, incorporating any digitally printed graphic motive. It’s a great opportunity for creative architects. gb&d
The Blocq range of large, wooden benches have built-in USB chargers.
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
How Strand Bamboo is Transforming the Flooring Industry Trinity Bamboo delivers a durable, beautiful, sustainable option for your floors. By Kate Griffith
DURABILITY & HARDNESS Few traditional hardwoods offer the performance characteristics of premium strand bamboo flooring. With an average Janka rating of 3500 (Janka measures the force required to embed a .444-inch diameter steel
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ball halfway into a sample of wood)—strand bamboo is 141% harder than North American hard maple. “Strand bamboo is very difficult to dent, and, thanks to the screen and recoat refinishing process, has an almost unlimited life span in typical commercial or residential spaces,” Goodham says.
STABILITY Having a dimensional change coefficient of .0014, strand bamboo flooring is one of the most dimensionally stable natural materials used in construction today. “To find a hardwood as hard and as dimensionally stable as strand bamboo you’d have to go to quarter-sawn teak or mahogany,” Goodham says. But these tropical hardwoods are mostly harvested from rainforests, increasing stressors on already struggling ecosystems.
PHOTO: ROGER TURK, NORTHLIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
Tom Goodham’s career as a leader in sustainably derived hardwood flooring started with a fascination for unusual solutions. “I was captivated by the idea that there were options for hardwood flooring that didn’t have anything to do with traditional hardwoods, that people were making this product out of fast-growing bamboo,” says Goodham, president of Trinity Bamboo and former vice president of manufacturing and operations for Teragren Bamboo. That product was traditional bamboo flooring, and it was the only style of bamboo flooring available from approximately 1995 when the industry started until 2005 when Strand Bamboo hit the market. Unlike traditional bamboo flooring in almost every way, strand bamboo combined the durability and dimensional stability of tropical hardwoods with the green credentials of traditional bamboo flooring products. “The first time I saw strand bamboo I knew it was going to revolutionize the world of flooring,” he says.
SUSTAINABLE SOURCING Rapidly renewable, Moso bamboo’s cultivation and harvest does not result in damage to its forests. Grown on lush mountainsides in China, this perennial grass is cut by hand by villagers who lease the harvest rights from their local government. Its rapid regrowth means bamboo forests sequester more carbon than typical hardwood forests. “These are largely naturalized strands gbdmagazine.com
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DID YOU KNOW? of bamboo that require no irrigation or pesticides,” Goodham says. “Because bamboo culms are harvested and transported off the mountain by hand, the soil and ground cover is not disturbed, which reduces or eliminates human-caused soil erosion.”
PHOTO: ROGER TURK, NORTHLIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
AESTHETICS Bamboo is naturally a light maple color and, like many hardwoods, is often sanded until it is perfectly smooth. Like other hardwoods, strand bamboo takes well to texturing and staining. “Strand bamboo is a chameleon in that, as a manufacturer, I can make it look like any species of hardwood I want,” Goodham says. In addition to color options, wire brushing and hand-scraping treatments give Trinity Bamboo’s strand bamboo a natural-looking grain that Goodham says helps to hide the reality all flooring experiences—dirt, scrapes, and scratches. When he started Trinity Bamboo in 2016, he wanted to sell flooring products with an authentic texture. “Our culture is attentive to changes that mar a perfect finish—think of the first scrape on your new car’s bumper—but floors are floors. You walk on them. We run, play, slide, hop, entertain friends, feed dogs, roll Hot Wheels, and otherwise live life to the fullest on our floors,” he says. “A floor is like a human—a bit of character hides the wear and tear of daily life. Aren’t we all happier that way?” gb&d
Dimensional change coefficient measures the expansion and contraction of a material in environments with shifting temperature and humidity levels. The more a material expands and contracts, the more difficult it can be to use in dry and humid climates. “To me the greatest attributes of strand bamboo are its hardness and dimensional stability,” says David Keegan, president of Seattlebased manufacturer Bamboo Hardwoods and a longtime industry colleague of Goodham. “There are simply no other flooring options that exhibit such durability and stability.
Trinity Bamboo is sold exclusively at trinitybamboo.com.
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
7 Benefits of SCHOTT’s Glass-Ceramics An innovative glass production process leads to better, more beautiful product.
SCHOTT has been in the glass industry for more than 130 years and leads development in areas of specialty glasses, materials, and advanced technologies. Today SCHOTT’s PYRAN® Platinum fire-rated glass-ceramic can be found improving and beautifying buildings all over the world. PYRAN® Platinum’s innovative Microfloat process combines aesthetics and safety, expanding the limits of building design. These are just some of the benefits.
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Smooth Surfaces
In 2007, SCHOTT introduced the world to the first floated glassceramic—PYRAN® Platinum. It continues to be the only floated glass-ceramic today, produced using the company’s unique Microfloat process, so you won’t find the blemishes or distortions you see with glass produced using competitors’ rolling process, which can leave imperfections as the glass rolls over steel rolls. SCHOTT floats the molten glass ribbon on an inert bed of liquid tin, cooling it slowly without any mechanical contact that could
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mar the surface. Competitors often need to polish their glass afterward to try to remove distortions, adding to the cost. “PYRAN® Platinum fire-rated glass-ceramic is the only glass-ceramic designed specifically for architectural applications,” says Dan Poling, sales manager for PYRAN®. The industry itself is small—three glass-ceramics manufacturers exist in the world. Poling says competitors’ fire-rated glass-ceramics are a byproduct of other products, like cooktop stoves, whereas SCHOTT’s fire-rated glass-ceramics are made to be just that. “We developed PYRAN® Platinum specifically for fire-rated architectural applications in North America.”
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Even Thickness
Because the molten glass is truly floating, you’re also guaranteed an even thickness. Poling says it’s difficult to control thickness with the rolling process, as the molten glass doesn’t have time to spread out evenly like it does when floating. “The best products you can buy are floated products. They’re more economical, you get a better surface quality, and you get a better, true thickness,” he says.
gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: IGNACIO ESPIAGARES, COURTESY OF STL ARCHITECTS INC.
By Laura Rote
UP FRONT
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Neutral Color
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Distortion-Free Finish
Traditional fire-rated glass-ceramics have an orange, yellow, or brown hue, but PYRAN® Platinum glass-ceramics do not, and architects love it. “Ours is more gray-green, providing a neutral color rendition,” Poling says. When you look through a competitor’s glass-ceramic that’s colored yellow, orange, or brown, everything appears an unnatural color. “When people see ours the first thing they say to us is, ‘Oh, this looks so much more clear.’ When they look through a product that’s more graygreen, it doesn’t mutate the colors we see, so the sky looks blue, the grass looks green.”
PYRAN® Platinum batches are smaller than those of soda lime glass, too, which makes the temperature easier to control. “We’re controlling the heat process, and being able to flow the glass on the bed of liquid tin allows us to have less deviation in the end product,” says Kim Kennell, marketing manager. While the process for soda lime glass can produce melts up to 500 to 600 tons of glass, SCHOTT produces 20 to 40 tons of glass. The raw materials used in PYRAN® Platinum are heated to temperatures far higher than those used in common soda lime glass. The temperature is then slowly decreased. This slow cooling enables the surface of the glass to remain smooth with a distortion-free finish. “Soda lime glass you see everywhere—it’s mass produced. This is not mass produced. It’s very customized,” Poling says.
PHOTO: IGNACIO ESPIAGARES, COURTESY OF STL ARCHITECTS INC.
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Large Sheet Sizes
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Sustainability
Using the Microfloat process also allows PYRAN® Platinum to offer the largest sheet size on the market, Poling says. Larger sheets of glass give architects more design flexibility and freedom. “You’re not constraining an architect,” Poling says. “Architects and people in general always want bigger windows and more natural light.” Fire-rated glass may not be at the top of architects’ lists, but it’s a necessity that can be used in beautiful ways. “It allows us to open things up, to get more vision and daylight into our spaces, and that’s great. People want more and more of that.”
PYRAN® Platinum is made without toxic heavy metals like antimony or arsenic, which are normally used as refining agents in the industry. All incoming raw materials must meet strict tolerances for contamination. SCHOTT uses solar panels and gray water at its facilities, too, and focuses extensively on recycling. SCHOTT currently recycles its internal cut-off and scrap material as cullet in its glass melts. The melt tank uses 40 to 50% cullet. SCHOTT also has 36 cutting stations in North America, so you can get fire-rated glass-ceramics close to home. This reduces lead time and cuts back on energy wasted shipping glass across the country, as you can get the product locally. gb&d
Fire-rated
PYRAN® Platinum fire-rated glassceramics prevent the spread of fire, hot gases, and smoke and are UL certified for up to 90 minutes in windows and 180 minutes in doors. Even under high thermal loads, the glazing stays transparent, ensuring a burning building can be safely evacuated. “We are fire-rated for up to three hours,” Poling says. “Our glass-ceramics withstand temperatures up to 1,900 degrees.” While schools and medical facilities are common projects with demands for fire-rated glass, architects need it for a myriad of buildings, and you’re likely to see it in any number of applications without even realizing it. Anytime there’s a building with a common wall with two different businesses or design purposes with visual separation, you need firerated glass.
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Schools and medical facilities are common projects with demands for fire-rated glass.
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UP FRONT
ENERGI was the first to bring this kind of tilt/ turn window to North America.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ENERGI FENESTRATION SOLUTIONS, FENERGIC
The Rise of Tilt/Turn Windows in America How ENERGI Fenestration Solutions is bringing European style to North American building projects By Lauren Bell
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UP FRONT
profiles (a process of shaping metals or plastics by forcing them through an extrusion die), but they also have a performance testing lab onsite to check the quality of all their products. “We try to offer the most complete solutions for window and door fabrication on the market,” Marois says. Tilt/turn windows are common in countries like France, Germany, and the U.K., but they’re still lesser known across the pond. North American builders tend to use double-hung windows in their projects that slide upward to open, or casement windows that are hinged at the sides and swing outward 90 degrees. Tilt/turn windows, however, either swing inward or outward from a vertical hinge, or tilt inward or outward on a horizontal hinge, and can switch between the functions by turning a handle. While some people consider tilt/turn windows’ European look to be aesthetically superior, that’s only one part of why their popularity is on the rise.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ENERGI
Quebec is at the intersection of European and North American culture, a blend of the styles and ideas of both continents. It’s also home to window and door manufacturer and distributor Fenergic, the company working with ENERGI Fenestration Solutions to bring a classic European window design, the tilt/turn window, to the U.S. and Canada. “We did not want to get to the market with the typical tilt/turn system that we think of in Europe,” says Jean Marois, manager of sales and business development at ENERGI. “We wanted to make sure the window system would be adapted for the North American market.” ENERGI, a PVC extruder for the window and door industry, was the first to bring this kind of tilt/turn window to North America approximately eight years ago. The company has built a reputation that goes above and beyond with their designs and customer service. Not only do they extrude high-quality window and door
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UP FRONT
” YO U C A N A C H I E V E HIGH STRUCTUR AL PERFORMANCE B U T S T I L L H AV E BIG DIMENSION W I N D O W S .”
ENERGI and Fenergic’s tilt/ turn window meets EnergyStar, PassivHaus, and LEED standards.
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ENERGI wanted to create a product that would stand out from other window systems on the market, and they did that by working with Fenergic to make their tilt/turn window a hybrid using PVC and aluminum. Windows with different color options have also been growing in demand, according to Veronique Bouladier, public relations and marketing coordinator at Fenergic. White PVC windows, which are energy insulating and made of recycled/ recyclable materials, can’t be painted because they will fade and crack easily. Aluminum windows can come in different colors, but are highly conductive and not insulating enough to pass energy efficiency codes. ENERGI and Fenergic’s hybrid tilt/turn window design can come in a variety of colors, while still meeting Energy Star, PassivHaus, and LEED certification standards. In addition to color options, architects and homeowners can choose a wider variety of window sizes and frame depths for the tilt/turn window compared to other designs. “You can achieve high structural performance but still have big dimension windows with the ability to add very high performance triple glazing,” Marois says. The design can also be fabricated in different combinations of tilt/turn windows, including the dual action tilt/turn window, tilt/slide window, french casement window, hopper window, and fixed window. No matter the combination, tilt/turn windows are impressively easy to clean. When the window is placed in the turn position, you can safely clean the exterior of your windows while being inside the building. gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ENERGI FENESTRATION SOLUTIONS; FENERGIC
Why Tilt/Turn
UP FRONT
42 Insulated glass package up to 42mm (1 5/8”) for optimal thermal value
95 Benefits Choosing this window design also helps building owners save on energy and heating bills, as well as maintenance costs. “The way the tilt/turn window is built, you can just open the window and leave it open to naturally ventilate the apartment or the building,” Marois says. Even when in the open position, the window can be locked so it can’t be opened from the outside, enabling people to safely leave their windows open without the risk of forced entry while protecting against potential accidents and injuries. When the windows are closed, the high-quality continuous compression weather seal on the frames and sashes provides excellent air tightness, high water penetration resistance, and high acoustical protection. Because of North America’s large range of climates, the windows have to be able to handle a variety of temperatures and weather events. Fenergic has clients everywhere from Alaska and New York to Florida and the Bahamas, for example. Windows in the north must insulate efficiently in cold temperatures, while clients in the south not only need windows that insulate in hot temperatures, but they also need to be wind, water, fire, and hurricane resistant. ENERGI and Fenergic wanted to create a product to meet all these standards, and their tilt/ turn window was the ideal design. Once installed, Bouladier says the windows will last 40 to 60 years. The tilt/turn window is still very new to North America, but it’s already growing in popularity. “There’s a growing demand for high energy performance, and this window system can achieve those requirements,” Marois says. “Architects will need those requirements to get to the market with good, new buildings and improve the performance of their buildings.” gb&d
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95˚ opening for easy maintenance
3 Meets all LEED certification criteria for 3 points
R-8 & ER-48 Achieves thermal values of R-8 and Er-48 using low-e/argon standard glass
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
The New, Improved Door Lock Hampton Products dared to change the familiar—front door locks—with user-friendly, wirelessage functionality, convenience, adaptability, and eco-sensitivity.
The e-Key code keypad is positioned under the sliding solar panel.
By Russ Klettke
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PHOTOS, THIS PAGE AND NEXT: COURTESY OF HAMPTON PRODUCTS
The vast majority of locks used today are based on inventions between the late 18th century and 1924, when Harry Soref invented the first padlock. But Kim Kelley, CEO of security hardware company Hampton Products, might have a lock on dramatically changing that. To be clear, Hampton traces part of its history to the 1973 invention by founder Dave Hampton of a weatherproof spare tire padlock. Fast-forward to today, where Kelley’s R&D team is using digital technologies in combination with high-quality hardware features and no shortage of ingenuity to rethink and reinvent residential door locks. The fact is that modern homes and their occupants have many unmet needs, and they’re ready for newer and better security systems. The invention comes in two parts: The Hampton Push Pull Rotate (PPR) door lock, plus the Array cloud and app–enabled smart deadbolt. Configured separately or together, they take home security to the Internet of Things level by creating conveniences for all users. There are many reasons why Hampton’s new lock should be at the top of your list when considering your next lock. gbdmagazine.com
UP FRONT
Enjoy access permission and control. The e-Key can be shared, and it can be changed. This not only gives ultimate control to the homeowner family, but extends the privilege to babysitters, house cleaners, delivery personnel (preventing front porch thefts), and temporary guests (useful with Airbnb listings). The e-Key code keypad is positioned underneath the sliding solar panel.
It’s on trend with the future. Rhea Smith, a purchasing manager with California-based Williams Homes, Inc., specifies the Array and PPR for the current houses they’re building now. “The smart locking system is spreading through the industry like wildfire,” she says, explaining that it’s part of the larger trend of digital home management with remote lighting, temperature, and water controls.
Open the door however you’d like—even if your arms are full.
It’s nice to have options. As the name implies, there are three ways to open a door with the Push Pull Rotate (PPR) lock. For example, anyone with an armful of packages can use an elbow or hip to push the mechanism in. Another person might prefer to pull the knob or lever (one finger only needed), but a traditional rotation is perfectly functional as well— all in a single mechanism. “It’s mostly designed for convenience,” Kelley says. “But this also satisfies the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.” The PPR can also be used with internal doors, since it comes in interior locking and non-locking functions, too.
It adds curb appeal and a grand entrance. Smith tracks residential design trends in California’s southern and central coast regions, where discerning homebuyers expect modern or traditional style houses that are equipped with both style and substance. She says door locks are part of the fabled “curb appeal” that sets the tone for showing a home to a prospective buyer. “A lock and door knob are the first thing they touch right before they go inside,” she says. “That sets the tone for the rest of the home.”
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UP FRONT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
The locks are easy to install and more secure than ever.
It’s easy to install, with parity pricing. Smith also has to keep an eye on costs when specifying any item in a new build. “The PPR and Array locks make no change to the build cycle,” she says, crediting the company for providing training to their installers. Manufacturing for simple installation and at a price that is at parity with other quality locks were priorities, the company says. “It took 18 months of excruciating testing to get the whole PPR and Array configuration right,” Kelley says. “Not just the mechanical elements, but maintaining connectivity and encrypting the security features.” He adds that the cloud-enabled app is done entirely with U.S.-based servers for an additional level of security.
It’s sustainable. Among the technological hurdles Kelley faced were keeping a good charge on the Array lock wireless feature. It has a lithium polymer battery that can be recharged, and two batteries are included with the product so you don’t have to worry when one is being charged. Even so, that may not be necessary for up to six months, as a built-in solar panel can keep the juice flowing in a green way. “Even with no solar exposure, such as inside a garage, the battery will last about 30 days,” he says. Kelley adds that the resiliency of the solar panel was essential, so they built it to a standard used by the U.S. Navy Seals in their field equipment.
Keeping occupants and interior contents safe from intruders is always the first goal of a security lock. But Array by Hampton combines convenience and reliability with digital technologies to make a WiFi-connected, multifunctional smart locking system. Authorized individuals who have e-Keys can open the lock. An activity log tracks who has used the lock and when. Also, a geofencing feature sends a notification to the known user asking if the door should be unlocked when they are within signal distance. gb&d
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PHOTOS: COURTESY OF HAMPTON PRODUCTS
It’s secure and reliable.
FRONT GREEN BUILDING UP & DESIGN
Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Punch List
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50 Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science
This Miami museum and aquarium blends innovative, sustainable design with education and community.
52 Lincoln Yards
Work is under way at this massive riverfront redevelopment in Chicago.
54 Beacon Park—Lumen Restaurant
This contemporary restaurant spurs urban renewal in Detroit without sacrificing the city’s history.
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PORTFOLIO
ASK THE ARCHITECT / GRIMSHAW ARCHITECTS
TANDING ON THE BISCAYNE BAY in downtown Miami, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science building reflects the area’s urban and natural life in its exhibits as well as its architecture. The four-building campus connected by exterior walkways and balconies includes an aquarium, planetarium, and science museum with plenty of carefully designed exterior exhibit and circulation spaces that take advantage of the ocean breezes for natural ventilation through the canyon-like structure. Vincent Chang, group managing partner at Grimshaw Architects, says the museum was designed to be sustainable, adaptable, and welcoming to create a full experience for visitors to get excited about science and technology. The Frost Museum is expected to achieve LEED Gold certification for its energy-efficient design. INTERVIEW BY LAUREN BELL
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gb&d: What were your biggest priorities going into designing this space?
Since the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science building opened in 2017, it has become a place of discovery, excitement, and education for the community and visitors alike.
Chang: As much as possible, Grimshaw’s design is meant to be a welcoming, “living” building, relying not only on its architecture but the local environment as well to create a full experience. The natural world plays a huge role in making the architecture what it is, whether it’s the view to Biscayne Bay, the soft light of the golden hour on the curving façade of the aquarium building, or breezes funneling between the museum’s four distinct buildings creating visitor comfort even in the hot, humid summer months in the exterior exhibition spaces as well as all exterior building circulation. From a mechanical sense, the museum is eminently adaptable, capable of responding to the needs of evolving function or pro-
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PHOTOS, THIS PAGE AND NEXT: RAFAEL GAMO; TOP RIGHT: CHAD BAUMER
S
PORTFOLIO
PROJECT
Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science LOCATION
Miami, FL SIZE
250,000 square feet COMPLETION
2017 ARCHITECT
Grimshaw Architects, Vincent Chang LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
ArquitectonicaGEO ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN CONSULTANT
Atelier Ten Read more at gbdmagazine.com
grammatic growth. Adaptability, with minimal disruption, is an essential part of the design, enabling the museum to integrate ever more sophisticated traveling exhibits and upgrade existing exhibits over time. gb&d: How is sustainability incorporated into the design?
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF HUFFT
Chang: Grimshaw and Atelier Ten carried out a study funded by the Department of Energy in 2009 for Frost Science. The aim of the research was to optimize the physical shape of the building via iterative wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics testing for thermal comfort—how people in the exterior spaces were going to feel. Grimshaw’s key design objective was to relocate as much of the building’s visitor program and its public circulation to unconditioned exterior shaded spaces in order to reduce the energy consumption of the building and improve the visitor experience (daylit, breezy outdoor spaces being generally more comfortable than air-conditioned black boxes). The trick was to use the uninterrupted prevailing winds coming in from the ocean and increase ambient breeze velocity through the public concourses by careful orientation of the building and shaping of its “canyon” forms, while avoiding shapes that would accelerate the wind unacceptably under hurricane conditions. The fine tuning of a “blow hole” in the building’s northwest corner, the leeward side, achieved the desired results and led to a distinctive architectural form informed by local climatic conditions. We have yet to do a critical quantitative post occupancy thermal comfort study, but a rough qualitative survey of stakeholders and visitors suggest this has been a huge success. All exterior exhibit and circulation spaces are sheltered
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from rain and sunshine and, based on that optimization, exclusively naturally ventilated—which is also the case for the car park. A high-performance air conditioning system is fine-tuned to provide superior comfort at low energy for interior spaces. Meanwhile, a vegetated roof accompanies a constructed wetland adjacent to the building for control of stormwater runoff and to enhance site biodiversity. gb&d: What was most unexpected about this project? Chang: The building does not have a single “front door,” and the building does not have an “atrium” as one might expect from a museum. Frost Science is designed to be almost a campus, an array of buildings connected by exterior walkways and balconies. The entire public circulation of the building is in the exterior, inviting visitors to view the landscape of Miami as they weave in and out of interior spaces. This becomes a journey for the visitors— beginning on the top floor looking down into the Gulf Stream Aquarium and feeling the breeze coming in off Biscayne Bay. As visitors continue their journey to lower levels, they proceed “deeper” into the ocean, where the interiors are darker and new viewpoints into the aquatic habitats are visible. The visitor is not only learning about science and local ecologies, but as they walk through the museum they understand the building, the institution is quite literally in and of the city. They see the physical environments from every walkway and exterior path. The views of Miami and the ocean and the prevailing winds coming off the water are just as much a part of the museum as the physical architecture itself. gb&d
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PORTFOLIO
ASK THE ARCHITECT / STERLING BAY
INTERVIEW BY LAURA ROTE
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gb&d: What is the mission behind the Lincoln Yards development? Chicago’s Lincoln Yards development will transform the riverfront near Lincoln Park and Bucktown with skyscrapers, a dog park, improved access to public transportation, 1 mile of new Riverwalk, and more than 13 acres of new public open space.
Cabonargi: Lincoln Yards is where Chicago connects. We hope to develop a new vibrant, mixed-use community and civic spaces that are known globally and loved locally. gb&d: What were your biggest priorities going into designing this space? Cabonargi: Our biggest priority is to design a place that inspires all who live, work, and visit Lincoln Yards. We have prioritized mobility and the connection of former industrial sites to adjacent neighborhoods and neighborhoods, once separated by rail, highway, and industry, to one another. We plan to transform the riverfront for the enjoyment and use of everyone and develop places that attract and engage everyone. gb&d: What aspect of the project are you most excited about?
gbdmagazine.com
RENDERINGS: COURTESY OF SOM/STERLING BAY
I
N CHICAGO, EVERYONE’S TALKING about the new mega mixed-use development Lincoln Yards , which is set to transform more t han 50 acres in the city over the next 10 years. The project is expected to not only convert brownfields into green space—it’s anticipated to have a huge impact on the economy, creating 23,000 onsite jobs and generating $38.4 million annually in net new revenue to the city. Sterling Bay’s Erin Lavin Cabonargi, director of development services, tells us more.
PORTFOLIO
PROJECT
Lincoln Yards LOCATION
Chicago SIZE
50+ acres COST
$5 Billion COMPLETION Cabonargi: Our team is excited by the transformation of the riverfront, the implementation of new public space, and the reconnection of neighborhoods. gb&d: How is environmental sustainability incorporated into the design? Cabonargi: Sustainability, both economic and environmental sustainability, is at the forefront of every design decision. We have emphasized the importance of public transit, walkability, wellness, and open space. We intend to seek LEED ND (LEED for Neighborhood Development) certification and are exploring the implementation of river water cooling, geothermal well fields, renewable energy, and energy-efficient building design. gb&d: What is this project’s biggest challenge? Cabonargi: The biggest challenges are the need for mitigation of existing traffic congestion and balancing our desire for lots of open space with the density required to fund it.
ture improvements include three new water taxi stations, short- and long-term Metra station improvements, 4,000 feet of new roadway, more than 6,200 parking spaces, improved Chicago Transit Authority infrastructure, and new bridges to connect pedestrians, bikes, transit, and vehicles across the river. gb&d: What is most surprising about this development? Cabonargi: We are re-imagining infrastructure and redefining our expectations to impact areas well outside of our land holding. We hope to inspire creative transit and connectivity solutions including a new multi-modal center anchored by a Metra station, the extension of the 606 (the 2.7-mile multi-use recreational trail and park) to the river and beyond, and by transforming DOT marshaling yards into vibrant play spaces in the form of a skate park and climbing wall.
10-year Development Cycle DEVELOPER
Sterling Bay MASTER PLANNER
CBT/SOM LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
James Corner Field Operations ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER
V3 Companies RIVERWALL ENGINEER
Collins Engineers TRAFFIC
KLOA & Kimley Horn gb&d: How can architects, planners, and developers create urban spaces that serve their communities?
MOBILITY
Nelson Nygaard gb&d: What are some of the proposed infrastructure improvements?
RENDERINGS: COURTESY OF SOM/STERLING BAY
Cabonargi: In addition to overall improved roadways and neighborhood connectivity, proposed infrastruc-
Cabonargi: Architects, planners, and developers can create urban places that best serve surrounding communities through engagement that helps to shape and inform the built environment in a manner that is vibrant, porous, and welcoming. gb&d
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PORTFOLIO
ASK THE ARCHITECT / TOULOUKIAN TOULOUKIAN INC.
N THE CENTER OF DOWNTOWN DETROIT, the new Beacon Park—Lumen Restaurant project of-
fers a vibrant public space where the community can dine, socialize, and interact with nature. Architect Theodore Touloukian designed the space as a green cultural hub for downtown, as the neighborhood continues to thrive. INTERVIEW BY MAIA WELBEL
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This downtown Detroit restaurant, designed by Touloukian Touloukian, emphasizes sustainability with indoor-outdoor social spaces and recycled materials.
Touloukian: Beacon Park–Lumen Restaurant, along Grand River Avenue, welcomes visitors into the center of downtown. This urban revitalization project and new public space was created to anchor the emerging neighborhood, spur economic development, and provide a quality space for the community. gb&d: What was most exciting to you about designing the building? Touloukian: The entire process was exciting. As an architect it was a great opportunity, as we were able to develop a building and space that’s tied to Detroit’s history, culture, and future. We wanted the project to
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PHOTO: JASON KEEN
I
gb&d: What role does this project play in the revitalization of downtown Detroit?
PORTFOLIO
PROJECT revitalize an abandoned lot, extend seamlessly off of the public way along Grand River Avenue, and flow into the park lawn. We worked closely with the landscape architect and structural and MEP engineers to design a building that is creatively integrated with all the professional disciplines. The project is unique to the city in that it has provided a modern statement for Detroit. Central to its modern geometry are strong cantilevered roof forms gesturing toward the historic GAR. building and the park’s elliptical lawn, and a grand stair leading to a roof deck on axis with the historic Book Tower building. Folding glass walls provide the opportunity for flexible indoor-outdoor spaces where the public can enjoy restaurant seating and the possibility for markets, music, and community meetings. We were also inspired by the automotive heritage of Detroit and the mid-century sculptural “muscle car.” The efficiency, compactness, and beauty of this vehicle was relatable to the design challenges we faced in creating flexible spaces and influenced our decisions behind design intent and aesthetic. gb&d: What were your biggest priorities going into this design?
gb&d: How is environmental sustainability part of the design? Touloukian: Resilience and sustainability is a core part of our practice. Improving thermal performance while providing high levels of transparency was critical to the design and LEED Silver (pending) certification. The design team implemented thermal breaks between steel members that pass through the thermal envelope, filled hollow structural section members with spray foam insulation, specified high-energy performance glazing, and continuously sprayed steel and metal decks to reduce thermal transfer. Additional sustainability efforts included the use of alternative transportation methods, recycled materials, Forest Stewardship Council–certified wood, and on-site rain infiltration systems.
Beacon Park– Lumen Restaurant LOCATION
Detroit, MI SIZE
9,835 square feet COMPLETION
April 2018 ARCHITECT
Theodore Touloukian LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
livingLAB STRUCTURAL ARCHITECT
Studio NYL
gb&d: What was this project's biggest challenge? Touloukian: The biggest challenge was concealing all of the building systems into a high-performing envelope while still maintaining the overall sculptural design
PHOTOS: JASON KEEN
Touloukian: Our main priority was to create a contemporary building for the city that respects the great heritage of its historic buildings. The design welcomes the public into indoor-outdoor social spaces through an adaptable floor plan that engages a variety of social
environments. We worked with the client to choose materials that would best support this goal. After several material studies, a combination of sapele mahogany wood, metal panel, precast concrete, and a green roof were selected. On the interior, the same mahogany wood was used in ceiling louvers and wall paneling, which was balanced against white acoustic fabric to create a welcoming and acoustically sensitive space.
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Touloukian and his team successfully concealed the building’s mechanical systems using creative, structural design.
quality. The structural system utilizes steel and concrete in a series of complex interdisciplinary details, angles, elevations, and connections. The main roof framing has two primary trusses that are concealed within the roof deck parapet walls. In addition to supporting the roof deck, steel outriggers, folding glass walls, and fall protection, these trusses and outriggers integrate large penetrations of mechanical ductwork, piping, fire protection, and electrical systems. A mechanical attic space is strategically concealed within the building form and ventilated with louvers and grilles as a part of the overall design intent.
sport team appearances. Our hope is that the project is a precedent for other revitalization efforts, is able to be enjoyed, and is equitable for all.
gb&d: How do you hope the community interacts with this space?
gb&d: If you could implement one change in the way all restaurants were designed to make them more sustainable, what would it be?
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Touloukian: A small building footprint can function and operate as a much larger public space. This is a result of efficient interior planning that utilizes operable glass walls to extend the occupiable space beyond the cantilevered soffits and into the park beyond.
PHOTOS: JASON KEEN
Touloukian: By providing an adaptable public building, the spaces reach out to engage the park and the local community. The client retained a management firm to organize programming that activates the park and building with events that range from team volleyball, family concerts, community yoga, night markets, and professional
gb&d: What was most surprising about this project?
Touloukian: To provide the patronage access to fresh air, light, some type of outdoor space, and most importantly good food. We found cooking takes a lot of energy relative to LEED projects, and we found it challenging to provide high-efficiency equipment. gb&d
gbdmagazine.com
PORTFOLIO UP FRONT GREEN BUILDING & DESIGN
Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Spaces Punch List gb&d
60 Setting an Example
Tulsa’s newly renovated central library is a destination for community engagement.
62 Eye for Design
The Tianjin Binhai library in China is an ambitious, creative space that inspires knowledge.
64 Shaped By Light
Austin Central Library is filled with natural daylight and sustainable features.
september–october 2018
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TYPOLOGY
LIBRARIES OF THE FUTURE BY COLLEEN DEHART
Libraries all over the world are being transformed into sustainable sanctuaries of education across all literacies. They are utilizing daylight harvesting, efficient water management, and alternative energy sources with added
focus on sourcing responsibly and limiting VOCs. While they remain centered on books and learning, modern libraries are increasingly important community centers—and architects and designers are taking note with inspiring people-centric design.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ERIC LAIGNEL
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TYPOLOGY
PHOTO: COURTESY OF AUSTIN CENTRAL LIBRARY
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TYPOLOGY
SETTING AN EXAMPLE TULSA’S REVITALIZED CENTRAL LIBRARY REINVENTS DOWNTOWN.
MSR transformed Tulsa City-County Library from bleak and outdated to modern and bright.
PHOTOS BY LARA SWIMMER
Renovating the old library in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, was not simply about upgrading systems and repairing windows—it was the ultimate task of urban renewal. Tulsa City-County Library is more than 50 years old and in an area downtown with many civic buildings and little green space. “It was a desolate place where most of the community did not want to hang out,” says Traci Lesneski, principal in charge at MSR, a design and architecture firm. When MSR took on the task of renovating the library—which reopened in October 2016—they wanted to upgrade systems and bring the library into the 21st century, but they also wanted to “make it a destination—an active place for learning and creative engagement,” Lesneski says. And, that they did.
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AN EXERCISE IN EDITING The 145,391-square-foot structure itself was meticulously maintained. “It had good bones,” Lesneski says. But, as with any building that has been standing for more than a half-century, its needs changed. “We had to clarify what the intent of spaces were and come up with the most efficient way to travel through the building,” Lesneski says. “More than anything, it was an exercise is editing.” The design team got to work preserving the history and beauty of the building while also determining essential upgrades. “The historic quality of the space was important and the detail it carried. There were a lot of great things we did not want to lose,” says Dagmara Larsen, project manager at MSR. The team worked to maintain the look of the existing gbdmagazine.com
TYPOLOGY
structure as much as possible by keeping the roof, balcony, entryway, and other aesthetic details the same. They added glass study cubes to the balcony to increase daylight, utilzing a space that was once unusable.
GOOD CHOICES Renovating rather than starting new was just one of the ways the project set an example for the community regarding sustainable practices. “We know our built environment is one of the biggest consumers of energy, and whatever we do we should be doing right to start with, especially with public buildings. They aren’t just serving the community, but they are teaching the community. A library provides knowledge, and it should be a good example,” Larsen says. With that in mind, the building became the first in the city with a rooftop photovoltaic solar array—designed to provide more than 140,000-kilowatt hours of renewable energy per year. High-performance glazing and more insulation was added to the windows to improve energy performance while maximizing outdoor views and daylight. Energy-efficient HVAC systems and a redesigned floor plan—all levels are open and con-
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nected in the center of the building—help to maximize comfort while reducing environmental impact. The HVAC system runs on frictionless bearing chillers, a heat-recovery chiller, and dual wheel ventilation air handlers. A fully automated lighting system utilizes daylight harvesting, scheduling, and vacancy and occupancy sensors. Landscaping around the building was also replaced with more water-efficient plant life and more pervious surfaces to reduce rainwater pollution. A stormwater collection and reuse system were installed, reducing irrigation needs by 189,000 gallons per year. Low-flow fixtures and automated faucets reduce potable water consumption by more than 40%. And no or low-VOC finishes and recyclable materials were chosen for the library’s interior to enhance wellness and keep air quality top-notch.
CONNECTING TO COMMUNITY The renovated library needed more parking, including spots for bicycles and fuel-efficient cars. MSR designers could have added a parking garage and called it a day, but what they saw instead was opportunity. “The area was barren and void of an intimate green gathering space. We saw we could add green space and make it more people-friendly,” Larsen says. An outdoor garden was built between the library and parking garage, providing a place for community events like movie nights, outdoor story times, and even weddings. Now a downtown destination, the space is cooled with chilled air released through a vent behind the vines directly into the garden space, reducing temperature and humidity—something that’s hard to come by in Tulsa. “This bit of green in an urban setting is truly impacting quality of life for so many,” says Kiley Roberson, communications director for the library. A variety of hands-on learning spaces were also added to the library, including a teaching center, flight simulators, 3D printer, stop-motion animation, game design and videography area, and an acoustically-treated room for music experimentation. “The 21st-century library is really about all literacies, and there are so many different kinds,” Lesneski says. september–october 2018
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EYE FOR DESIGN THE TIANJIN BINHAI LIBRARY TAKES AN ARTISTIC APPROACH.
The Tianjin Binhai Library looks like a book lovers haven. Upon entering, visitors are welcomed into an atrium that ebbs and flows in what appears to be floor-to-ceiling books, with a luminous spherical auditorium called “the eye” at its core. But the building is less about books than community engagement. Designers of the Tianjin, China library—the work of MVRDV and the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute—were tasked with making a modern, adaptable space that housed books while inviting people to gather. “The main challenge was to create a design that was ambitious and rethink the typology for a library, so it is no longer a dull and depressing environment. It becomes a social space that also promotes reading, knowledge, and inspiration,” according to the MVRDV design team. Finished in late 2017, the 363,000-square-foot space was commissioned as part of a larger plan to create a cultural district for the city. It’s surrounded by four other cultural buildings, all connected by a glass-covered public corridor. A public park sits in front of the library.
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PHOTOS: ERIC LAIGNEL
BREAKING THE MOLD There is no question the Tianjin library—a Chinese Green Star two-rated building—breaks the mold of the traditional library. It’s far from the boxy structure often seen in library architecture. “The interior is almost cave-like, a continuous bookshelf,” says Winy Maas, MVRDV director and cofounder. gbdmagazine.com
TYPOLOGY
This library in China centers on building community, with an auditorium as the “eye.”
PHOTOS, THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS: COURTESY OF TIANJIN BINHAI LIBRARY
Terraced bookshelves wrap the walls of the atrium while also being represented on the outside—each level doubles as a louvre, allowing light and air to flow through. Glass walls in the front of the library open to the park outside to allow for nature views and enhanced daylight. “We opened the building by creating a beautiful public space inside; a new urban living room is its center,” Maas says. The terraced bookshelves that wrap the atrium walls act as seating and walkways for visitors to reach other parts of the building. “The angles and curves are meant to stimulate different uses of the space, such as reading, walking, meeting, and discussing. Together they form the ‘eye’ of the building: to see and be seen,” Maas says. Strict regulations on the structure’s size created a challenge for designers who were required to include a cinema space. The “eye” was the solution. “Not being able to touch the building’s volume, we ‘rolled’ the ball-shaped auditorium demanded by the brief into the building and simply made space for it, as a ‘hug’ between media and knowledge,” Maas says. The fully functional auditorium seats 110 spectators. gb&d
INSPIRING KNOWLEDGE While the building’s main atrium isn’t meant to be a reading place, there’s an abundance of quiet, educational spaces among the five levels. The library has designated reading rooms, child-specific spaces, elderly and community meeting areas, lounges, and computer and audio rooms. Two rooftop patios increase access to daylight while also providing an area to connect with the outdoors. The shelves are home to 1.35 million books, with additional book storage in the archives. The “books" on the highest shelves of the atrium aren’t really books, though—they’re perforated aluminum plates printed to appear as books. While not part of the designers’ master plan, construction time constraints led to the elimination of plans to create access to the upper shelves from the rooms behind the atrium. Access may be added in the future. september–october 2018
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SHAPED BY LIGHT
Libraries have long been designed around books, often neglecting the human experience. Just think about it—books, and other items of age, need dark, cool environments, but people thrive in light. Texas’s Austin Central Library—opened in October 2017—is redefining public library design. While books are, of course, still an emphasis, the building’s designers also focused on people. The 198,000-square-foot facility—a joint venture between Lake|Flato and Shepley Bulfinch—strives to be the most daylit public library in the U.S. Austin Central Library is literally shaped by light. At its core is a six-story atrium, which provides daylight to more than 80% of the library’s regularly occupied spaces. “The presence of daylight makes people feel happy and more productive. It makes people want to be there,” says David Lake, principal in charge for Lake|Flato. And people do want to be there. The library sees an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 people a day on the weekends and 5,000 a day during the week—that’s more than five times the visitors the old library had, Lake says.
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PHOTOS: COURTESY OF AUSTIN CENTRAL LIBRARY
AUSTIN CENTRAL LIBRARY IS REDEFINING PUBLIC LIBRARY DESIGN.
TYPOLOGY
Austin Central Library focuses on the comfort of its visitors with ample daylight and outdoor reading spaces.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF AUSTIN CENTRAL LIBRARY
MAXIMIZING RAYS Before breaking ground on the building—adjacent to Shoal Creek and Lady Bird Lake—architects made models to see how light would enter the space. “We took the models outside and tried all different configurations. We wanted to harvest the light evenly around the building without glare but still have a library that could be flexible in the future,” Lake says. “It was our biggest challenge.” Once the building’s shape was determined, architects had to make sure the walls, stairs, elevators, and ceilings each played a role in bouncing light. White, perforated metal panels were used to harvest daylight and improve perceived brightness. “The more light we could get from natural sources, the less we had to rely on electrical lightgb&d
ing systems,” says Jim Chambers, project manager at Shepley Bulfinch. “Lighting is really important in a library. People need to be able to read and navigate, and we didn’t want to have to rely too much on electricity between the stacks.” Visitors who want to enjoy daylight and fresh air at the same time can also relax on one of the library’s screenedin reading porches or in the rooftop butterfly garden. “You can hang out over the lake as a citizen overlooking nature,” Lake says. The solar arrays that sit over the rooftop garden both shade and cool the upper area and provide electricity for the library. The three arrays—567 solar panels with a total of 180 kilowatts—help the building use half the electricity of a typical library. september–october 2018
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TYPOLOGY
The new library harvests daylight, reducing its electricity usage.
TRANSFORMING A COMMUNITY The library is on its way to becoming LEED Platinum and sits on the former brownfield site of the old Seaholm Power Plant, decommissioned in 1989. The site has since become Austin’s first EcoDistrict, with the city itself pushing environmentally sustainable, restorative, and people-centric practices. Pedestrian walkways, bike trails, and abundant bike parking have been added around the library, too. “The library is now an anchor in a bustling neighborhood, in a place that was once inhabitable,” says Jonathan Smith, project architect at Lake|Flato. Sustainable features abound here, too. A 373,000-gallon cistern—part of the decommissioned plant—is now being put to use by the library. The cistern collects rainwater and HVAC condensate for the building’s restrooms and landscaping irrigation, reducing combined indoor and outdoor potable water by 45%. The team also used local and recycled materials, with 23% of materials sourced from within 500 miles. More than 20% of the building is made of recycled content, and native plants make up 100% of its landscaping. Frequently referred to as “Austin’s living room,” the library includes collaborative learning spaces and community rooms to encourage engagement. It also has amenities like a coffee shop, bookstore, and demonstration kitchen. “Libraries are where we exchange information and build community, and they are integral places for learning and sharing,” Lake says. “It has been a joy for both firms to design a place that builds upon the local character of Austin and aspires to be a very resource-efficient, welcoming city living room.” gb&d
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GREEN BUILDINGTYPOLOGY & DESIGN
Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Punch List
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68 Smarter Shades This restaurant uses Corradi’s retractable shade system to make outdoor dining possible—rain or shine.
72 Building Better Bridges The team behind these pedestrian walkways are committed to preserving nature while connecting people to the outdoors.
76 Making Clean Water More Accessible New Mexico State University puts health and hydration first with Elkay’s bottle filling stations.
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SMARTER SHADES Corradi USA transforms outdoor spaces with customizable shading systems. by Julia Stone
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF CORRADI
When you visit the Cane and Canoe restaurant in the Montage Hotel at Kapalua Resort in Maui, one of the first things you’ll notice, besides the ocean view, is the outdoor dining space with a levitating canopy roof—an award-winning installation. Corradi USA made this retractable shade system possible, allowing diners to enjoy their meals while protected from the sun, wind, and rain. “Corradi’s systems are strong, beautiful, and utilitarian,” says Gary Barnes, master fabric craftsman at Tropical J’s Incorporated in Honolulu. “It’s really easy for me to meet our customer needs by working with Corradi because they will customize almost anything.” THE CHALLENGES
The restaurant wanted a retractable canopy so patrons could see the sky. Installing posts in the front was out of the question because they wanted to preserve the view—this meant
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INNER WORKINGS
Cane and Canoe restaurant’s canopy roof allows guests to dine with a stunning view of the ocean.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF CORRADI
the canopy needed to be cantilevered. With no support posts above or beneath the structure, the engineering team first decided on heavy steel beams. But the only way to get to the dining area is through a series of stairs and narrow walkways. “The more we looked at it, there was the question of how do you expect to get the materials down there and install it,” Barnes says. “That created a huge engineering problem.” The materials needed to be lightweight, but also strong enough to support their own weight and withstand the weather. That’s why Barnes and his team chose to work with Corradi. Alberto Tanzi, president of Corradi, and his son Francesco, director of operations, are experts when it comes to awnings. The Tanzi family has been in the shading industry for generations, first running a family business in Italy and later partnering with Corradi Italy to manufacture their product for the U.S. market. The father and son collaborated with Barnes every step of the way during the project— from the custom design to the installation. HOW WE DID IT
Corradi’s B-Space system, made of aluminum and designed to cover large surfaces, was the key to the project’s success. “Alberto sent me a picture of the B-Space product holding up pallets of stone and a photo of him driving his car on it,” Barnes says. gb&d
“That’s when I realized the runners are extremely strong, and relative to their strength, they’re extremely lightweight.” Barnes, Francesco, and Alberto figured out a way to use these runners as the structural perimeter. They created a giant ring from doubled-up B-Space runners and hung this between four pre-existing concrete posts around the dining space. “We were able to talk the architect into limiting the projection to about 20 feet, which made the whole installation doable with almost no disruption to the resort,” Barnes says. “We were in and out in two to three days as opposed to two or three weeks.” There was no room for error in manufacturing. “The tolerance we had to adhere to for this project was plus or minus one millimeter—or about a fifth of an inch,” Francesco says, adding that the accuracy of the assembly had to be flawless. That’s why Corradi pre-assembled the entire structure in their Texas warehouse before shipping the parts to Hawaii. Usually Corradi doesn’t need to test their structures because their products are standardized, but they wanted to ensure this custom design fit together when it arrived. Their precision paid off—the installation went smoothly with no size adjustments needed. The final result is a welcoming space that keeps customers cool and comfortable. When deployed, the system provides an estimated 10-degree drop in temperature. september–october 2018
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SUS TAINABILIT Y In most of their products, like the B-Space, Corradi uses aluminum they get from extrusions. Any part that’s left over doesn’t get thrown away—it’s scrapped and recycled. No matter the material, Francesco says recycling is at the forefront of their company culture. Corradi also sources their wood from a company that plants more trees than they cut down. “They are net positive when it comes to the sustainability of their forest. And that’s important to us, too, because we don’t want to destroy the environment,” Francesco says.
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Corradi’s retractable shade systems are built to withstand Hawaii’s winds. PHOTOS: COURTESY OF CORRADI
Their water mitigation strategies support sustainable design as well. “Through the customization capabilities we have, we can really give the customer all of the options for where they want the water to go based on their design,” Francesco says. Any system can be produced in a flat or pitched version, meaning that if the runners are flat, the water drains from the sides of the unit. On a pitched system the fabric is taut and the water drains off the front. You can also add guttering if you want to divert the water to a specific area.
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THE VISION
Meeting the aesthetic vision of the design was no easy feat. “It’s a very high-end restaurant with a lot of fine wood finishes that no one really wanted to cut into or touch,” Barnes says. The project also required a beam two times larger than Corradi’s standard beams. Luckily, Francesco and his team are used to thinking outside the box. “When you look at the B-Space beam from the side it looks like one single tall beam, but it’s actually two separate extrusions that have plates engineered to stick them together, which provide the structural forces required to hold the unit up,” Francesco says. Barnes was concerned about how the steel beams would fit in with the high-end style of the restaurant. The steel beams would have required wood cladding, but this would have added even more weight to the structure. Fortunately, Corradi’s aluminum shading system didn’t need cladding because of its beautiful finish and high-quality powder coating. The custom beams aligned perfectly with the aesthetic. RETURN ON INVESTMENT
PHOTO : COURTESY OF CORRADI
Barnes says installing Corradi’s system has definitely helped the restaurant’s business. “Restaurant owners, particularly in Hawaii, don’t realize the importance of outdoor dining to their guests,” Barnes says, adding that outdoor dining areas are always the first places to fill up. It’s an investment to install an outdoor canopy, but it makes your business stand out from the rest. “In a world where everybody is trying to separate themselves from their neighbors, this restaurant now
has a 100% unique product that nobody on the island other than them has,” Francesco says. As specialists in commercial applications, Corradi often presents return on investment calculations. By adding outdoor seating, restaurant owners gain more functional space, which means more seats to fill and more revenue. “Before, in the industry you really had two options: You either leave the patio open or you close the patio,” says Francesco. “We came into the industry with the knowhow to make it so you can have either at any point with the push of a button.” Of course, Corradi USA’s products can be used anywhere—from hurricane-prone regions to snowy, mountainous areas. “We have a lot of success in the national market whether it’s New York, Florida, Colorado, Canada, or Illinois,” Francesco says. Many of Corradi’s products are 100% enclosed, creating a room that can be heated or cooled. “I’ve seen heaters, fans, LED lights, TVs, and more installed in our systems,” Francesco says. Having a comfortable space means the world, and it’s no secret that low-quality products hurt business. Barnes says many restaurants put up cheap umbrellas, but then they lose business because their umbrellas break from strong winds. Corradi’s system incorporates aluminum cross members on the fabric to reinforce the entire structure. “For the Cane and Canoe project, each runner had about eight of these, so it’s able to withstand massive forces compared to a normal awning or a screen,” Francesco says. “The entire purpose of the Corradi line is to prevent damage from wind, water, and the sun.” gb&d
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A top-down approach was used at Amberly Glen to protect wetlands.
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PHOTOS: RALPH CARSON, SULLIVAN EASTERN
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INNER WORKINGS
" TOP- DOWN CONSTRUC TION S O LV E D A L O T O F P R O B L E M S ." Backwoods Bridges takes an environmentally friendly approach to creating peoplecentric bridges and walkways. BY MARGARET POE
Backwoods Bridges has been making custom timber bridges since 2008.
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Walking across the finished timber bridge, you probably wouldn’t guess it was built from the top down. And yet that’s exactly how all three of the bridges at the Amberly Glen development in Cary, North Carolina, were constructed. It’s an approach that was chosen because a portion of the trail system in this community of single-family homes and townhomes is built upon wetlands. With traditional building methods, the crew would have had to come in with a large crane and potentially a barge to pass through water. That’s a lot of heavy equipment to traverse a sensitive environmental site like a wetland, explains Andrew Kuehl, chief estimator at Backwoods Bridges, which designed and built the bridges and boardwalks at Amberly Glen. Working top-down, however, allows the crew to build the bridge with the tractor and other machinery right on top of the structure itself. “You basically build a 10-foot section or so at a time, and then you move your machinery onto that 10 feet you just built, and you keep building progressively until that structure is built,” Kuehl says. september–october 2018
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Attention to detail and custom design make Backwood Bridges stand out.
WHY THEY DID IT
It’s a process with multiple benefits. “If you’re working in a wetland area or a place that’s hard to get to with traditional equipment because of site conditions, you basically remove all those site conditions out of the equation, and now you can build from a stable structure,” Kuehl says. “It eases access on the contractor, where you don’t have to tear up the world just to build something. And it’s much better for the environment because your tractor isn’t tearing it up.” The approach was a perfect fit for the bridges at the Amberly Glen project, which were built between 2017 and 2018. Two of the three bridges are combined with boardwalks, given the wetland topography. The top-down style is crucial to protecting that beautiful environment, says the project manager for the development, Ralph Carson, of Sullivan Eastern. Not only would the wetlands be damaged in a traditional building process, but it would take a significant amount of time to replant the foliage under the affected area. And even after replanting, you wouldn’t likely result in the same mix of grasses and flowers. “It’s an aesthetic issue, it’s an environmental issue, [top-down construction] just solved a lot of problems,” Carson says. STANDOUT WORK
Backwoods Bridges, founded in 2008, has made a name for itself building custom timber bridges and trails across the country. The timber itself, of course, is essential—the firm works with a Georgia-based supplier of southern yellow pine. But what sets the company apart goes beyond raw materials. It’s the attention to detail, the design touches, and the customization, says Andy Mullis, senior project manager at Backwoods Bridges, which is based in Freeport, Florida. Just about any builder can pick up
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some lumber and put together a bridge, he says. But having the bridge designed and built by the same firm allows for an additional level of customization. It means designers can ensure the structure integrates perfectly into the environment. That could come down to something as simple as steering the bridge around a tree the developer doesn’t want to cut down, he explains. Mullis says that expertise shapes all kinds of decisions. For example, there are a couple ways to connect two members on a bridge. A traditional engineer without timber bridge experience would likely opt for a bracket. But a Backwoods designer would opt for a bearing connection, in which both pieces are fit on top of each other. This allows for a faster connection process and a stronger connection, he says, adding that these are the things gained by “hard-won experience.” Plus, there’s an aesthetic benefit to the style. “I like the way timber and wood look on a bridge,” Kuehl says. “I mean, concrete and steel are kind of hard, and they just don’t have a good look, whereas timber has warmth and characteristics that make it look and really stand out and become a centerpiece.” gb&d PHOTOS: RALPH CARSON, SULLIVAN EASTERN
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INNER WORKINGS
The Amberly Glen project in North Carolina included three bridges in a wetland area.
Designers ensure structures like this one integrate seamlessly into their surroundings.
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Elkay’s ezh20 bottle filling stations are improving health and hydration.
MAKING CLEAN WATER MORE ACCESSIBLE Experts at Elkay® weigh in on why bottle filling stations are an asset to public health.
The students at New Mexico State University (NMSU) were recently on the lookout for a healthier, easier way to access water. The traditional water fountains on campus just weren’t cutting it anymore. “A student volunteer heard about Elkay ezH2O® and rallied students around the idea of bringing it to the university,” says Arti Lyde, director of global product management and strategy at Elkay. A local plumbing company donated the first bottle filling station to the university, installing the system in the student activity center, which is the main place where students hang out and exercise. A SUCCESSFUL SOLUTION
Students immediately saw a difference in convenience. Now they could stay hydrated and fill water bottles in seconds. The donated bottle filling station was such a hit that they advocated for more bottle filling stations across campus, too. Soon,
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administrators got in on the movement, especially as they realized the energy savings inherent with the technology. In three years, the university has installed more than 30 bottle filling stations.
it’s really given a new dimension to the way folks get water in public spaces,” says John Watson, manager of compliance and sustainability at Elkay.
“In the world of environmentalism, sustainability, and education as a whole, it’s very difficult to see practical results working efficiently,” says Matt Thomas, CEO at BeCause Water, a nonprofit that provides consultations on best water practices to schools and communities. “ezH2O is one that intersects the values of sustainability and health with a very, very tech-savvy, engaging solution.” Lyde says consumers, especially college students, are switching from taking quick sips of water from an old-school fountain to carrying water bottles. Elkay’s bottle filling stations help meet this need while promoting sustainability, public health, and hydration. “Drinking fountains have always been required in the plumbing codes, but now with the onset of our ezH2O bottle filling stations,
SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY
The ezH2O bottle filling station saves plastic water bottles from turning into waste, too. “Every bottle filler is eliminating hundreds of thousands of individual-use bottles from ending up in landfills and oceans,” Lyde says. “The number is staggering. It’s sometimes as high as 9 out of 10 bottles that could end up not being recycled.” Within a couple of years, NMSU saw a half-million bottles saved—that’s a significant amount of plastic kept out of the waste stream. On top of that, NMSU saved on labor costs and waste disposal fees. Every bottle filling station includes a Green Ticker™ that shows how many bottles have been saved from waste, making the experience exciting and interactive, too. Elkay’s Enhanced bottle gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO : COURTESY OF ELKAY
By Julia Stone
INNER WORKINGS
fillers include an energy saving mode to allow facilities managers to shut off the refrigeration system over nights and weekends as well. Bottle filling stations also save water from going down the drain—100% of the water flows directly into your bottle. “When you drink water from a traditional drinking fountain, 50% of that water actually goes down the drain,” Watson says. The infrared filling device features a sanitary, no-touch sensor that automatically shuts off when the bottle is full, and the station’s laminar flow allows for a quick fill with minimal splash—taking only seven seconds to fill up a standard 16-ounce water bottle. HEALTHIER DRINKING WATER
“Delivering clean, filtered water has had one of the biggest impacts on global health,” Lyde says. Elkay’s ezH2O bottle filling station has a filter that helps remove dangerous contaminants while improving the taste of the water. “Water helps regulate body temperature, provides lubrication for your joints, helps blood flow, and regulates blood pressure,” Lyde says. “By making water more accessible, we can drive improvement in health.”
Students are advocating for more bottle filling stations on campus.
Watson also points out that many schools across the nation have challenges with safe drinking water. “For example, in Chicago, reports show many of the fixtures in public schools have excessive amounts of lead, above the 15 parts per billion allowed by law,” he says. Fortunately, Elkay’s ezH2O bottle filling station helps remove lead to help reduce student health issues related to lead exposure and provide access to cleaner, healthier water. The unit features a filter status indicator that allows consumers to know they’re getting clean, filtered water every time they fill up.
“There’s a clear incentive for us to invest in public drinking fountains—for our environment and our economy.” In the future, Elkay hopes to develop higher levels of filtration and expand into new environments—including residential areas. “There’s a saying in the green business, which is ‘People don’t like to buy green products from brown manufacturers,’” Watson says. “That’s why we’re also working on our internal processes to make sure that, as a manufacturer of a sustainable product, we’re also using sustainable practices.” gb&d
GROWING IN POPULARITY
Outside of the educational market, Elkay’s bottle filling stations are also expanding into public transportation spaces, like airports. You’ll see many of the stations located right after security because people have become accustomed to carrying their own water containers, emptying them before they go through security, and then refilling them when they get to the other side. “Water is a key aspect of human health. The more we increase our access to it, the more we’re going to improve our health as a country,” Thomas says.
BY THE NUMBERS After 3 years, NMSU is now home to 34 Elkay ezH2O bottle filling stations. The university estimates that more than 527,000 bottles have been saved. The amount of bottles saved is equal to more than 21,600 pounds of 16.9-ounce bottles.
PHOTO : COURTESY OF ELKAY
NMSU has achieved a 70% diversion rate—the percentage of waste that does not end up in landfills.
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GREEN BUILDING INNER WORKINGS & DESIGN
Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Punch List
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80 Drones are Changing the Way We Build
3DR’s Site Scan is transforming the construction industry.
84 From Plastic Waste to Window Shades What was once a hazard to wildlife now helps cut energy use in buildings, thanks in part to Mermet USA.
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TRENDSETTERS
DRONES ARE CHANG ING THE WAY WE BUILD
By Laura Rote
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largest industry—has room for improvement. In many parts of the world it remains an old, traditional business, fraught with delays and inefficiencies. But construction teams are looking to change that, and they’re adopting new technologies, like drones, to build faster and smarter. “Construction is one of the least digitized industries in the world,” says Chris Anderson, founder of 3DR, the leader in drone software for construction, engineering, and mining teams. “It’s paper and pencil and flip phones. It’s ripe for transformation, but because it’s a large and relatively conservative industry, it’s been resistant. Today, that’s changing.” 3DR came to fruition after Anderson—the former editor-inchief of Wired—partnered with Jordi Muñoz, a 19-year-old from Mexico who made a fully functioning autopilot using circuitry from a Nintendo Wii remote. In early 2016 3DR launched Site Scan, a complete drone data platform with drone, flight app, and a web app for processing drone photos into maps and models and analyzing results. Site Scan offers a suite of tools for actually getting insights out of drone data, such as measuring distances and volumes, overlaying blueprints to compare design to reality, gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: COURTESY OF 3DR
The technology to improve one of the world’s biggest industries is here. 3DR Site Scan’s impact on construction will be huge.
It’s no secret that construction—the world’s second
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and it also makes it easy to export data into other tools like Autodesk BIM 360, Revit, Civil 3D, and InfraWorks 360. This helps teams, clients, and other stakeholders get real-time updates about construction projects so they don’t have to be onsite to see whether a project wis going as planned. THE EVOLUTION OF DRONES IN CONSTRUCTION 3DR came to be after Anderson and his wife— both technical people—wanted to get their kids interested in science and technology. “The kids showed almost no interest,” Anderson laughs. But there was one experiment that sparked something—at least for Anderson. He’d come home with a robotics kit and an airplane kit, but the kids weren’t impressed. Robots were boring, they said. Airplanes were boring. “I said, ‘Well, what about a robot airplane?’” he recalls. So they made one, and Anderson was taken aback. “It worked just well enough to blow my mind. I was like, ‘This should not happen. You shouldn’t be able to put Lego parts in a model airplane and create something that is essentially a military drone.” Anderson had to learn more. He created DIYDrones.com, meeting Muñoz through the website,
and things took off. As hardware was revolutionized with the invention of the iPhone, drones suddenly became a realistic—and in demand— product. But taking the technology to the next level wasn’t entirely intentional. He sent Muñoz a $500 check for components, and the demand was overwhelming. Soon they were making 1,000 drones a week. They assembled their first drone kits by hand and shipped them in pizza boxes. In 2012, Anderson left Wired to focus on the venture full-time, scaling up on hardware while keeping the software open source. “We became the software company I always wanted to be,” Anderson says. “The challenge was which part of the world were we going to measure.” MAKING A BETTER BUILT ENVIRONMENT 3DR considered various applications for drones at first, from agriculture to insurance. They felt Site Scan could make the biggest impact in construction, and they partnered with Autodesk to help make that happen. At the time, Autodesk was helping to digitize construction with its AEC Collection and was putting a big focus on building information modeling (BIM) with its BIM 360 platform. Traditionally, project teams designed buildings on-screen, but the process
PHOTO: COURTESY OF 3DR
3DR Founder Chris Anderson launched Site Scan, a complete drone data platform, in 2016.
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2007
Chris Anderson builds his first drone at home with his kids using Lego kit parts and goes on to found DIYDrones.com
Later in 2007
Through DIYDrones.com, Anderson meets Jordi Muñoz, who becomes a partner in creating the first drone prototype
2012
Anderson and Muñoz found 3DR. Anderson quits his job at Wired
2014
3DR takes drones mainstream. First ready-tofly consumer products are released
2015
Solo, the world’s first smart drone, launches
2016
Site Scan launches
But there’s environmental efficiency to be had as well. 3DR is currently working with cement companies, for example, scanning plants to identify heat leakages and breakdowns in insulation. “That ability to monitor that site from a thermal perspective is an opportunity to reduce emissions,” Anderson says. PROVEN RESULTS Site Scan has already been used on some impressive construction projects, streamlining everything from the Atlanta airport to large factories. Right now 3DR is working with Arcadis in Qatar on a huge highway project to be finished in 2018. The client wanted fast, accurate volumetric calculations for earthwork throughout the roadway. “When we were preparing the business case and looking for a drone solution, Site Scan stood out compared to alternatives,” says Paul Kawuma, Arcadis’ innovation and infrastructure BIM manager. “We liked how easy it was. We could trace the area to survey using the tablet, then the drone will fly itself and capture the images. We could then upload the images directly from the drone to the cloud—which plays a key role in streamlining the drone to data process—and they start processing into orthomosaics and other deliverables automatically.” The traditional survey took three hours compared to the drone survey, which took 20 minutes. The drone captured substantially more data points, too: more than 1.5 million data points compared to less than 200, and the elevation profile based on that data was far more accurate. “When it comes to ease and efficiency, drones are taking surveying to a whole new level,” says Liam Kirk, business director at Arcadis. Digitizing and capturing a site has many more benefits, too. For one, it allows you to identify problems, or clashes, early. “If a concrete slab is in the wrong place you can gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: COURTESY OF 3DR
went analog the moment construction began. “The digital tools to design were not the digital tools to build it or to maintain it afterward,” Anderson says. “If you’re commissioning buildings, you want transparency to see how it’s going because you’re going to be paying for it,” Anderson says. “BIM brought accountability and visibility into the costs.” 3DR wanted to digitize construction projects afterward, too, scanning at every stage. “Today buildings do have a living model, and when you’re done you have a very high resolution model of the building, which continues to be updated and used for maintenance and renovation,” Anderson says. “Autodesk had everything except for the capture part.” The easiest way to digitize the site was from the air, so 3DR became the capture solution, integrating with existing Autodesk tools and focusing on the built world. The partnership made perfect sense. While a project may look perfect in CAD, the story often differs onsite. Across the industry, trillions of dollars can quickly be lost in change orders, rework, and schedule slips. Anderson says construction companies often underbid projects knowing they’re going to make the money back in change orders and overruns. “When you look at the inefficiency in the industry, the general consensus is there’s a 30% cost savings just waiting to be taken when you introduce BIM, but there may be even more.” The typical commercial construction project runs 80% over budget and 20 months behind schedule, according to global management consulting company McKinsey & Company. Having a paper trail is beneficial, especially for improving communication and resolving disputes. “Some construction projects end in a lawsuit because of cost overruns or schedule overruns, and someone has to pay,” Anderson says. “Having this transparent paper trail of the entire site settles the disputes really quickly.”
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Drones are taking surveying to new heights, as they can survey a site in 20 minutes compared to three hours for a traditional survey.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF 3DR
spot it early on because you can compare it with the underlying CAD file,” Anderson says. Without Site Scan, you rely on local site managers to check, but Site Scan is automatic. “If you catch clashes early they aren’t too expensive to fix. If you miss it, you have to tear things down.” Site Scan also reduces wasted resources. Consider, for example, a hole that needs to be filled with sand. Most current contractors estimate how much sand to order by the truck load. “Holes are ‘guesstimated’ in terms of cubic yards. You often have too much or too little,” Anderson says. “If you have too little you delay the project. If you have too much you wasted a resource.” JUST THE BEGINNING While drones have been used to scan sites gb&d
all over the world, Anderson says it’s only the beginning. He envisions an industry where sites are scanned daily or even hourly, compared to the current scanning done by a surveyor maybe once or twice in a project. Right now drones are focused on the exterior, while much of a project’s cost is on the inside—after the walls go up. Anderson says capturing interiors is the next frontier. “We’re working with a number of companies to bring Site Scan indoors,” he says, adding that they can use technology like rovers to get a more in-depth picture of projects even after work moves inside. He expects this to be a reality by late 2018. “Why shouldn’t you have something like this when it’s something as big and important as a construction site?” gb&d september–october 2018
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FR OM PL A S TIC WA S TE TO WI N D OW SHADE S
GreenScreen Evolve reutilizes up to 14 recycled water bottles per yard.
Thanks to a new initiative called Weaving Change™, Mermet is taking what was once a hazard to the environment and turning it into shade fabrics capable of cutting energy use in buildings. 84
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we can’t seem to get rid of it. In many cases, it’s quite literally killing us. Stories of whales, dead after consuming immeasurable amounts of plastic, are all too common. When National Geographic, Smithsonian, and countless other media released images of 80 plastic bags and other debris found in a whale after it ultimately died earlier this year, we were not surprised. Yes, the story of plastics in waterways and oceans is widely understood; five gyres in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans contain five trillion pieces of plastic—plastic that goes on to be consumed by fish, mollusks, birds, and, ultimately, humans. While the stories and statistics may no longer shock us and the problem may seem larger than life, water advocates and even some major companies are taking it upon themselves to be part of the solution. Enter Mermet USA, makers of Sun Control Textiles™, whose new “Weaving Change” initiative is dedicated to just that. “Weaving Change is a multi-faceted initiative that seeks to highlight the ways small actions, when woven together, can have a broader ecological and social impact,” says Lauren Jensen, Mermet’s marketing manager. “With sustainability as a key pillar of Mermet’s Weaving Change mission, it’s our goal to connect multiple groups such as architects, businesses, and environmental organizations gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: COURTESY OF MERMET
Plastic. It’s everywhere, including our oceans, and
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8M
1.9B
11,000
Every day approximately 8 million pieces of plastic pollution find their way into our oceans, according to Surfers Against Sewage.
There is enough plastic entering our water every year to fill up 5 grocery bags for each of Earth’s 1.9 billion feet of coastline.
Scientists at Ghent University determined that those who consume shellfish are also consuming up to 11,000 plastic fragments in their seafood annually.
to mobilize behind a shared commitment to conservation. One of these ways is through our U-Turn shoreline cleanup initiatives.” Mermet has been a global leader in manufacturing high-quality solar shade solutions for more than 40 years. The South Carolina–based company designs and manufactures innovative textiles that go into completed window shade devices. The products themselves serve an important sustainability goal, as they significantly reduce solar gain in buildings, and in some instances, are even made from postconsumer recycled plastic waste. This is the case for the company’s GreenScreen® line of recyclable fabrics.
recycled water bottles per yard, and Revive fabric includes up to 11 post-consumer water bottles. There is even a GreenScreen Recovery Program where Mermet takes back and 100% recycles these products. “By investing in sustainable manufacturing and bringing cleaner, energy-saving products to market, Mermet has begun weaving change in our own way,” says Robin Childers, Mermet’s sustainability coordinator. “We hope our efforts will inspire others to
Lutron Electronics recently completed the ASID’s Washington, D.C. headquarters with their QS motorized shades and GreenScreen Evolve fabric.
PHOTO: PHOTO:ERIC ISTOCKPHOTO.COM LAIGNEL, PERKINS + WILL
FROM TRASH TO TREASURE Created on the foundation of ensuring minimal environmental impact throughout their production and useful life, GreenScreen fabrics are 100% recyclable, Cradle to Cradle Certified–Bronze, non-PVC, and made with as much as 89% recycled plastic waste. Mermet partnered with green manufacturing powerhouse Unifi® to make its GreenScreen Evolve and Revive fabric lines possible. The American company specializes in creating Repreve recycled fibers, transformed from recycled plastic waste into inspiring everyday products—including window shade fabrics. By using Repreve fibers, Evolve reutilizes up to 14 gb&d
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Lutron lighting and shading solutions played a key role in helping the ASID become the world’s first building to achieve Platinum certifications in both WELL v1 and LEED v3.
GREENSCREEN FEATURES
“
Interior, designer shade fabrics
collaborate with us on new initiatives, whether that involves product development, local ecology projects, or creating new green shading solutions in the built environment.” WEAVING CHANGE FOR OUR OCEANS AND WATERWAYS As part of the Weaving Change initiative, Mermet recently launched its U-Turn shoreline cleanups, which aim to remove plastic waste from beaches, rivers, and other shorelines. In September 2018, Mermet volunteers will participate in a U-Turn cleanup operation alongside the environmental nonprofit, Winyah Rivers Foundation (WRF). It’s the first U-Turn event of many, as the company plans to collaborate with other companies in the window shading and building design
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industry on cleanups. WRF program officer April O’Leary says the organization engages hundreds of volunteers in litter cleanups throughout the Winyah Bay watershed each spring and fall to recapture bottles, straws, plastic bags, and other detritus. O’Leary organized volunteers in 90 cleanup events in the first half of 2018 alone, capturing 22 tons of trash before it washed out to Winyah Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. For Mermet, though, this is only the beginning. The company has immediate plans to expand its GreenScreen family of fabrics and is also seeking volunteers for additional U-Turn cleanups. You can sign up to become a local U-Turn volunteer or sponsor a cleanup by visiting mermetusa. com/weaving change. gb&d
Variety of colors, styles, and openness factors 100% recyclable Contains up to 89% recycled content Cradle to Cradle Certified - Bronze GREENGUARD Gold Non-PVC Reflects solar energy and blocks UV
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PHOTO: ERIC LAIGNEL, PERKINS + WILL
Mermet has begun weaving change in its own way.”
GREEN BUILDING TRENDSETTERS & DESIGN
Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Punch List
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88 Life in the Trees ArtisTree connects people with nature using clever treehouse construction.
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LIFE IN THE TREES Treehouse design and construction company ArtisTree brings people back to nature. BY C OLLE E N D E H A R T
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I N 2 0 11, WILL BEILHARZ WAS CLIMBING
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in Sonoma County, California. Complete with a harness and hammock, he slept in the trees overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As he relaxed in his hammock, fully at one with nature, he had an epiphany. “I needed to help people access this experience—to bring man back to nature,” Beilharz says. So he decided to build homes that were literally supported by living, moving, breathing elements of nature— trees. Beilharz founded ArtisTree in 2012 and has become a leader in the industry, taking on everything from tiny homes to luxury rental treehouses and resorts. “It is giving people a new way to access nature and different ways to use their imagination,” he says. Beilharz is not new to building in the trees. He became an industry expert in aerial construction while working at his family’s zip line canopy tour in Austin, Texas. Cypress Valley Canopy Tours was one of the first of its kind in the U.S., and Beilharz helped to build his first treehouse on the property in 2006 after people asked to stay in the trees. ArtisTree recently completed its fifth treehouse on the property. It’s this notion of full immersion in nature that makes Playa Viva—ArtisTree’s eco-luxe treehouse resort in Mexico—the most rented of the facility. “It changes you. People come here and tell us they don’t think they will be able to stay in another place again,” says David Leventhal, principal at Playa Viva. A F R E S H C A N VA S
The ArtisTree team looks at each project as a work of art. In the same way that each new art project differs from the last, every treehouse is unique. “These are not just structures where people live, they are pieces of art within nature,” says Ben Newman, partner and designer at ArtisTree. When ArtisTree is approached with an idea, its team of designers works together with the client to formulate a design that suits their needs. “It’s all about, ‘How can we collectively create this beautiful piece of functional art?’” Newman says. The variation between structures is also necessary because no two trees are alike. Once a location for a home is chosen, ArtisTree brings in a local arborist to determine the species, age, and health of the tree they plan to use.
FEATURES
Then, they call in an engineer to calculate what the tree can hold. Once they have established that the tree is safe and healthy, they spend a fair amount of time climbing the tree and measuring elevations. The team makes adjustments as needed based on floodplains, roof heights, and layouts. “We have to construct our own little island in the air before we do anything else,” Newman says. GIVIN G BAC K TO N AT U RE
When ArtisTree takes on a project, they pay close attention to local resources and try to source as much as possible from the area. “We are going beyond LEED Platinum and net-zero. We look at how structures can improve an environment rather than just do no harm,” Beilharz says. “We are tryFrom beachfront ing to make the escapes to world a better homes in the place through trees, ArtisTree is getting people our existence. outside and We are always closer to nature. looking for suppliers or ways of interacting that are elevating for everyone involved.” Beilharz’s team also looks at the various health, safety, and sustainably sourced certifications for materials to make sure they are making the most responsible choices. Their goal is to use at least 80% recycled materials for the interior build-out, according to Newman. When Newman gets on-site, he spends a lot of time looking around the area and harvesting reclaimed materials. He even sorts through people’s garbage and reaches out to pickers who have undertaken their own expeditions through garbage dumps and yard sales. “We live in a society where everything needs to be ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful.’ If I can use trash to create something beautiful, then maybe I can help people to realize what is possible using recycled materials,” he says. Sam and Erica Hawala, owners of the ArtisTree-built Ohana House (which sits on hardened lava in Hawaii) admit they were a little unsure when Newman found some old wire gb&d
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“WE ARE GOING B E YO N D LEED PL ATINUM AND NET-ZERO.” in the lava and asked if he could use it in their tiny home. He used the wire to construct a light for the kitchen. “The whole experience showed us you can live on the earth and live very gently,” Erica says.
ArtisTree looks at how structures can enhance the environment.
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Beilharz and his team are working on expanding ArtisTree beyond construction and design to its own hospitality brand centered around nature. “We are using regenerative design, architecture, and hospitality to help preserve and conserve legacy pieces of land,” Beilharz says. “We want people to be able to access these pieces of land and to have wonderful, amazing, restorative nature experiences.” ArtisTree is currently in the process of acquiring land for a treehouse resort in the San Francisco Bay Area. The ArtisTree team is also working on a project with a client to design and build a tiny house community. The community will consist of 30plus tiny homes to provide affordable, minimalist, sustainable living in Austin, Texas. “We are always looking for new clients who are interested in pushing the limits of what is possible for the built environment,” Beilharz says. “We want to create art and get outside the box.” gb&d gbdmagazine.com
PHOTOS, CLOCKWISE: SARAH BRADFORD, EMILY SMITH, THE CUBIC STUDIO
W H AT ’ S N E XT ?
GREEN BUILDINGFEATURES & DESIGN
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96 Old Meets New
The restoration of this University of Toronto building is a sizable and sustainable feat.
97 Pushing the Boundary
One York, a mixed-use skyscraper in Toronto, is breaking ground with its green attributes.
99 A Modern Take on Preservation
Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works is being revitalized to become a national hub for education.
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TRANSFORMING TORONTO B Y S A R A H T R E L E AV E N
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O R O N TO might be more synonymous with piles of white fluffy snow than with anything even remotely green, but a new sustainability movement is aiming to change that. The city ranks high on the Sustainable Cities Index, in part due to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by over 25% since 1990. And there are several ongoing major initiatives, like the 2030 Districts program that aims to cut district-wide emissions in half, including zero emissions from new buildings by 2030. The Toronto Green Standard, a set of sustainable design requirements paired with financial incentives for new private and public developments, aims to reduce emissions, improve air quality, and reduce household and construction waste. Many institutions, including the University of Toronto, have committed to minimum LEED standards for both new and renovation projects. But Toronto’s design scene has set its sights beyond just LEED certification to a range of new standards, including passive houses and carbon neutral projects. Retrofitting has become a crucial mission in a city with a limited historical building stock, much of which has been neglected. But now even abandoned factories like Evergreen’s Kiln Building are becoming community event spaces with integrated solar thermal and geothermal systems. And the University of Toronto’s One Spadina project has resuscitated a historic college with the addition of a modern wing and data-driven green spaces. New buildings are setting ambitious green agendas, too. The cranes across Toronto’s skyline are nothing new, but the focus on sustainability is unleashing new creative potential. The newly completed One York building includes rainwater cisterns and a large photovoltaic solar panel array. We recently sat down with representatives from all of these projects to learn more.
PHOTO: BEN RAHN / A-FRAME
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Old Meets New The restoration and expansion of One Spadina Crescent, a late 19th-century building in the center of the University of Toronto’s downtown St. George campus, presented architects with a unique challenge: How do you preserve and resuscitate an existing structure, add a contemporary addition, and create an exterior landscape that contributes to a unified whole? Raising the stakes, the building was slated to be the new home of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. On November 17, 2017, the new building opened its doors and was instantly recognized as a marvel of historic preservation and contemporary innovation. A model of sustainable construction, the glass, stone, and steel building was designed to develop over time while simultaneously showcasing sustainable design practices like rainwater harvesting, daylighting, bicycle parking, a green roof, and the incorporation of photovoltaic technology as it evolves. Accomplishing such a feat of integration required a sizable team of experts. Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, principals at the Boston-based NADAAA, in conjunction with architects Adamson & Associates, landscape architects Public Work, and heritage architects ERA,
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designed the new One Spadina Crescent. “There have been many phases of excitement and joy and anticipation,” Faulkner says. “While the building itself has a number of features you could tick off a list, proof that they really put their money where their principles are, there’s nothing more satisfying than taking an existing site and giving it another century.”
Sustainable Benefits And that new century is modeled on increasingly green design values. “The client’s attitude about the renovation was oriented around sustainability and preservation,” Faulkner says. Architects and engineers discovered almost immediately that it would be almost impossible to bring the existing structure up to a 21st-century level of comfort in terms of being a fully controlled building with a full range of conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter. So the client made an early call, deciding to accept a much wider
swing in comfort and set the hot-cold points a little lower and higher. “It was a remarkable way to start the project,” Faulkner says. With that mandate set, the team looked to make the windows operable to ensure access to fresh air and help moderate temperatures, adding fans where necessary, and preparing to advise people “to wear a sweater when needed.” The existing brick from the original structure was already fairly permeable and left as is. “If you seal up a triple-thick brick wall that has been breathing for decades and you stop that ability of the drying cycle, ultimately it can really degrade the building,” Faulkner says. Conventional air conditioning was used sparingly in areas where it was essential, like the library. There are active radiant heating and cooling surfaces—which minimized both the amount of fan power and ductwork required—in some of the most populous spaces,
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PHOTO: JOHN HORNER
S U S TA I N A B L E D E S I G N IS THE FOCUS OF THIS UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO BUILDING
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The third-floor studio includes a great hall and skylights.
including studios and the street space in the middle that serves as the main entrance. “The client really felt that was so important to their goals, and particularly to their philosophy as a design school, so this was something they were willing to spend some resources on,” Faulkner says.
Overcoming Challenges Deferred maintenance on the existing building—originally the home of Knox College—at times both consumed excess resources and complicated design plans. “It had been a good 40 or 50 years since anyone put any work into it, so the surprises we encountered were endless,” Faulkner says. Continuing excavation of the old structure delayed new construction and then eventually began to erode the available budget. But the new building, as Faulkner notes, does a lot with very little. “The big moment is the third-floor studio, which has this tremendous lifting moment of this
great hall with skylights and a column-free space, like a promenade.” The building is also proving to be an exceptional learning environment for the John H. Daniels faculty. More than 30,000 square feet is devoted to studio space, there’s an 8,000-square-foot public gallery (the only exhibition space devoted exclusively to architecture and design in Ontario), and a new fabrication laboratory with cutting-edge computational-controlled technologies. Further, the Green Roof Innovation Testing Lab was designed to study the environmental performance of green roofs, green walls, and solar photovoltaic technologies; the site includes 33 green roof test beds, three green walls, a weather station, and 270 sensors for collecting data. “It’s such a total approach,” Faulkner says. “The building is an active, breathing structure, and it reflects the faculty’s approach to sustainability. They decided to make their commitment visible rather than being checklist-driven.”
PUSH I NG TH E BOU N DA RY This Toronto skyscraper set its sights on sustainability.
,
PHOTOS: JOHN HORNER; DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY
TH E V ISION F OR ON E Y OR K a new multipurpose building in the center of Toronto’s increasingly dense downtown, was ambitious from the start. But all expectations were shattered when the property achieved LEED Platinum certification with 89 points—the highest score in the city’s history. The building was completed in late 2016 with a mandate to accommodate a wide range of needs across more than two million square feet of space spread across a four-story podium and three towers. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plans, the owners of the building, now occupy much of One York’s office space; Sun Life Financial is another primary tenant. The building has hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail and restaurant space over a three-story street-facing podium occupied by a range of outlets. The building also has more than 1,000 residential units, with amenities like a large fitness center. “I think what’s most interesting is how each of the building’s separate uses combine into a really great mixed-use project,” says Dermot Sweeny, founding principal of Sweeny&Co Architects. Sweeny&Co led a team that also included Green Reason, a sustainable building consulting and project management company that served as LEED consultant to One York.
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s Toronto’s One York connects patrons easily to the city outside its doors.
drip irrigation and also the building’s toilets and urinals. Together, these modifications account for an annual savings of more than five million liters of potable water. Energy savings are also significant. In addition to multiple occupancy and daylight sensors, the building also makes use of LEDs in exterior lighting. And the roof is also host to a photovoltaic solar panel network, which generates a significant amount of energy.
Innovative Design
Connecting the Community
One York offers numerous points of integration with the environment around it, including lobby space that opens onto three streets. You can also easily access Toronto’s PATH system, an underground network connecting much of downtown, including Union Station, Scotiabank Arena, the Eaton Centre, and several office towers. It was all done with a sophisticated sustainable mandate estimated to offer an almost 50% reduction in energy consumption in comparison to a typical office tower. The green building checklist associated with One York
is extremely lengthy: The building employs both an Enwave cooling system and an onsite high efficiency boiler plant, high efficiency HVAC equipment, and a high performance curtain-wall system. The incorporation of both green spaces and water conservation was also a priority, and a public green roof offers sweeping views of the city. “The roof garden is really important because it’s an expansion of the public space,” Sweeny says.
Significant Savings
Rainwater is collected from large cisterns as well as from nearby towers and is used in both
Sweeny says one of the building’s most clever features is an under-floor air conditioning system. “This system means you can take air anywhere through the floors, and that translates to a tremendous ability to make everybody comfortable,” he says. “Anywhere you punch a hole in the floor, the air comes out, and all offices have control over their own fresh air supply and temperatures.” That air supply is also significantly warmer than it would be in a typical building—up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit when distributed, versus the standard 55 degrees Fahrenheit. “That gives us a longer shoulder system in terms of being able to use outside air to cool the building, going into May and June, and we can also use it earlier in the fall,” Sweeny says. “And the air coming out of the floor is also much more pleasant than having 55-degree air blowing on you.” And there were other sustainable modifications, big and small, that helped One York achieve its groundbreaking LEED certification. The building is well connected to Toronto’s mass transit system, but cycling is also supported with the installation of more than 300 bike racks as well as shower facilities. There are preferred parking spaces for carpool vehicles, plus electric vehicle charging stations. One York also made use of conscientious products during construction and design, including 15% recycled content and 35% regional content, and low-emitting paints, adhesives and flooring.
G Eat & Drink RUBY WATCHCO MIKU KUPFERT & KIM THE BEET
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A Stay
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PLANET TRAVELLER HOSTEL THE WESTIN HARBOUR CASTLE TORONTO HOTEL SHANGRI-LA HOTEL
TORONTO GREEN LIVING SHOW ST. LAWRENCE MARKET TORONTO ISLAND PARK THE WORKROOM
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PHOTO: COURTESY OF SWEENY&CO ARCHITECTS PHOTO: DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY
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A Modern Take on Preservation PHOTO: BEN RAHN / A-FRAME
Renovation continues at Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works, preserving history while planning for the future.
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The Evergreen Brick Works site has quickly become a point of pride for Torontonians—an abandoned brickmaking factory in the center of a verdant valley was repurposed in 2010 as a progressive community center, with farmers’ markets, sustainability and nature workshops, and even picture-perfect weddings. But there was one key aspect of the site that remained relatively untouched: the Kiln Building, which historically held the kilns that fired the bricks made here until the site was shuttered in 1984. Now it’s the Kiln Building’s turn for revitalization. In 2017, Evergreen brought together LGA Architectural Partners, the City of Toronto’s Heritage Preservation Services, Ontario Heritage Trust, and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to retrofit the building through an innovative carbon-neutral design. Phase 1 of the project was completed in spring 2018, allowing the Kiln Building to reopen as an event and educational space. Phase 2, which includes installation of a solar panel system and creation of a Kiln Gallery, began in the summer. The Kiln Building will be the national hub for Future Cities Canada, a new city-building initiative launched in 2018. Built in the 1950s and designated as a heritage structure by both municipal and provincial authorities, the design team decided early to leave as much intact as possible. “Our approach was to take an ultra-light touch,” says Drew Adams, the project architect. “The building was just so incredible to begin with. How do you negotiate really celebrating this long history
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of the site while thinking about the future history of the site and laying the groundwork for that, which is this phenomenal environmental community center in the heart of Toronto? As well as being historic, it’s also very young.” But that ultra-light touch also needed to accommodate a commitment to sustainability, as evidenced in the other buildings on the Evergreen campus. “LEED, passive house. and net zero didn’t really make sense,” Adams says. “So we started thinking about carbon neutral.” To achieve that, the building’s heating and cooling systems make liberal use of solar and geothermal systems. Compared to a conventional approach, t h i s s y ste m i s p re d i c te d to e l i m i n a te 6 4 7 tons of carbon annually. In a particularly innovative twist, the Kiln Building team is also factoring in carbon offsets for the entire construction process, including the electrical load. “EllisDon has been tracking the power it takes to power equipment and deliver things,” Drew says. “We’re trying to encourage people to not just look at the footprint of the materials but also the construction process energy—which is really interesting.” Faithful to the preservation of the original building, the amount of new construction is actually quite small, which has helped to limit the footprint. But some of the new infrastructure includes piping, lighting, raising the floor, and one of the largest gender-neutral bathrooms in the province. The challenges on the site are manifold, including frequent flooding due to the building’s proximity to the Don
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River and several open-air sides that limit the ability to both condition and warm the space. Evergreen also sought to preserve much of the space’s graffiti, reflecting the significant period of time when the building was vacant. But the building’s purpose—chiefly, community and educational events—has given designers greater flexibility in their range of options. “It’s not intended to be conditioned as a Class A office space year-round,” Adams says. “It’s going to be a little warmer in the summertime and a little cooler in the wintertime. Evergreen is going to tell people to bring a coat for winter events. It’s a huge shift in the design philosophy, but it’s based on the idea of heating and cooling people, not spaces. This is about changing the conditioning of a building, but it’s also about changing frames of mind.” They ultimately settled on radiant in-floor heating and cooling, with a solar thermal system of almost 300 panels that ties into a geothermal system of almost 50 boreholes dug 50 feet deep. “They asked us to do something really ambitious on the sustainability front, and we spent a lot of time talking about appropriate standards for a one-ofa-kind building,” Adams says. The Evergreen campus continues to evolve, and Adams says the Kiln Building has inspired new ways of thinking about how to make the campus’ other structures net zero. “The first building was Platinum and that seemed really appropriate for the time and place, and now ours is carbon neutral,” he says. “A third building seems to lend itself to a passive house approach, and another could work with a double-skin curtain wall outside the original brick building. Maybe it’s not that all of your buildings are LEED, but you might look to build a whole campus of high performing buildings.” gb&d gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: BEN RAHN / A-FRAME
The design team intentionally left as much intact as possible at Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works, including graffiti that accumulated over the years.
GREEN BUILDING & DESIGN
Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Punch List
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102 5 Reasons to Hire a Code Consultant Vidaris shares how consultants can help you mitigate risks, identify compliance issues, and more.
104 Boost Your Green Building Career with Training Ecotech courses give a holistic and hands-on approach to sustainable building practices.
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A
5 Reasons to Hire a Code Consultant HOW YOU CAN SAVE TIME, MONEY, AND ENERGY ON YOUR NEXT BUILDING PROJECT. By Maia Welbel
These are just a few reasons why you should work with a consultant on your next building project.
1 FOCUS ON YOUR FIELD OF EXPERTISE, AND LET A CODE CONSULTANT DO THE REST. Architects and engineers are hired to design buildings—they shouldn’t spend their time bogged down in textbooks and accreditation. Code consultants take care of those responsibilities accurately and efficiently.
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2
3
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CODE CONSULTANTS’ DIVERSE EXPERIENCE.
KNOW YOUR BIGGEST HURDLES EARLY AND MITIGATE YOUR RISKS.
Any regulatory compliance issue you face on a building project has probably also been faced by many before you. Consultants can implement strategies they know succeed because they’ve applied them in the past with clients in similar situations, saving you valuable time and resources. “We are there as a sounding board, offering ideas and solutions,” LiMandri says.
Thanks to their comprehensive familiarity with federal, state, and local building laws, code consultants can identify potential conflicts or violations early in the development process, heading off the need for a costly and time intensive redesign later.
> REAL-LIFE SCENARIO: For the development of four warehouse buildings on a 3.4 million-square-foot brownfield site on Staten Island, Vidaris consultants drew from their expertise in master planning, code advisory, and expediting. They consulted on each step of development, from the design and layout of the buildings to strategically engaging governing agencies to speed up the process.
> REAL-LIFE SCENARIO: Vidaris recently worked on a new hotel and residential building development in Manhattan that was cited for not having compliant windows in every unit. Vidaris advised the architect on how to adjust the location of the windows to satisfy code requirements for fire separation distance and window opening area, and as a result, all units were preserved, saving the owner/developer thousands of dollars.
gbdmagazine.com
PHOTO: PIXABAY
HOW TO
Vidaris in 2014 and established s building techthe firm’s code advisory division nology progressafter serving as the New York es, building codes City Department of Buildings become increasCommissioner. During his time ingly important. in city government, he saw how These regulations architects and expediters often address public health, safety, and faced confusion around complienvironmental protection while ensuring sustainable and livable ance, and he wanted to correct conditions for generthat. “Code consultations to come. But ing firms like Vidaris they’re also changing streamline the arduous Vidaris consultants cover services rapidly. In order to be and confusing process. effective, architects and including handicapped We want to help design accessibility reviews, teams bring their engineers must make due diligence surveys, projects to fruition,” decisions that comply fire and safety LiMandri says. with regularly updated evaluation, and green Hiring a code concodes, revolving around consulting services for everything from fire rating systems like LEED, sultant like Vidaris can WELL, and Fitwel. and earthquake safety come with another significant advantage to light and air quality. because Vidaris has a Vidaris, a consulting holistic suite of complimentary firm with the latest building code service offerings. With focused know-how, helps design teams departments for façade design, make these decisions. Senior roofing, and waterproofing Principal Robert LiMandri joined
APPROACH
measures as well as both energy efficiency and sustainability, this allows Vidaris’ code consultants to interact in-house with other experts in their own focused practice area, and allows Vidaris’ clients to get top-of-the-line service. Matrix Development Group recently worked with Vidaris on a global logistics center project in Staten Island. “Matrix has had a significant relationship with Vidaris since the project’s conception, and they have been of tremendous value,” says Joseph Taylor, president and CEO of Matrix Development Group. “Our involvement together started as code review and has expanded to every area of the project, master plan, and individual building design. Our relationship has saved Matrix significant time as we work through the approvals and permitting process. Bob and his team at Vidaris have been an invaluable member of our team.”
4 STAY ABREAST OF THE LATEST REGULATIONS.
NAVIGATE CONFLICTS BETWEEN BUILDING CODES AND ZONING LAWS.
Building codes are updated every three to five years at the federal, state, and local levels. Code consultants can point out new terms in the legislation and provide context for why those provisions were adopted. It’s the consultant’s job to research and understand how code matures over time, so you can be confident your project complies with the most current standards. Vidaris also sits on multiple code revision committees to provide feedback to code officials and help shape the next code iterations.
In addition to building codes, which regulate how a development is constructed, design teams must adhere to local zoning laws, which regulate what types of developments can be constructed in a particular area and how they relate to their surroundings. Code consultants can guide you when it’s unclear how to integrate and reconcile these requirements/mandates. They can also collaborate with the city’s building department to settle more complex compliance issues.
> REAL-LIFE SCENARIO: When an affordable housing
development in Manhattan was damaged by Hurricane Sandy, municipal agencies amended flood maps, raised designated flood elevations, and introduced new requirements for properties in flood zones. Vidaris helped the design team navigate this new legislation and secured a code interpretation that eliminated the need for a major building system redesign.
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> REAL-LIFE SCENARIO: Vidaris recently worked with the development team on a high-rise development in Brooklyn that met objections in municipal review due to issues with the building footprint, its impact on a nearby railroad, and vehicular access. The consultants assisted with a redesign that complied with code and zoning, expediting the project review process and ultimately getting the project approved.
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HOW TO
Boost Your Green Building Career with Training ECOTECH TEACHES BUILDING PROFESSIONALS THE LESSONS THEY NEED TO SUCCEED.
By Maia Welbel
I
f the solar industry keeps growing at its current rate, the whole planet will be covered in solar panels in fewer than 70 years—at least by the estimation of Sean White, a solar energy instructor at Ecotech. He likens his field to that of computers in 1980. Products and policy are developing so quickly, he says he was in the right place at the right time when he began his career in solar. White frequently attends renewable energy conferences to keep abreast of solar innovations and says the conversation can be radically different from one year to the next. “It’s an exciting time to be working in an industry that’s driven by such cutting edge technology.” The amount of electrical power generated by solar has increased almost 500-fold over the past two decades, and opportunities for solar professionals continue to expand. White and his colleagues at Ecotech are passionate about helping their students become leaders in the field.
BE IN THE KNOW If you work in solar energy, Ecotech courses will help you get certified by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP), which can enhance your credibility and earning potential. But the Ecotech curriculum goes beyond teaching to the test. From hands-on installation workshops to the science behind photovoltaics, Ecotech takes a holistic approach to solar training. NABCEP is a voluntary certification program, but in White’s experience, practitioners who pass the exam are more likely to be hired and have a more comprehensive understanding of the technology. As the industry grows, so do
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the opportunities for solar professionals. “We see people with all different backgrounds in our program,” White says. Ecotech offers a range of solar courses so participants can choose to focus on installation, sales, safety, or design. Ecotech also offers specialized courses in energy auditing. “I recommend these trainings to every building professional,” says George Callas, energy efficiency instructor. “After almost every course I’ve taught, students have told me it completely changed how they do their job.” Building Performance Institute (BPI) Analyst and Envelope Professional courses will prepare you to evaluate energy performance and create a greener built environment. Callas began teaching BPI courses after building a zero-emission home for his family. “I left New York City with a 1-year-old and moved to Maine to get back to the land,” he says. “Without knowing anything about construction, I built a super insulated, fossil fuel–free house.” Callas says improving building efficiency is one of our most vital responsibilities in addressing climate change. “BPI training gets to the heart of what it takes to make home environments healthy and energy-efficient,” he says. Callas says he’d do some things differently if he was building his off-grid home today. “I just didn’t know the building science,” he says. Now he helps builders and architects make smarter choices. LEED is the most widely used certification for green building, so an understanding of the rating system can benefit anyone in the industry. Ecotech’s LEED trainings focus on cutting edge green building innovations and the LEED rating system. Flexible online curricula make preparing for the LEED exam straightforward and accessible. gb&d gbdmagazine.com
Ecotech's three areas of training: Solar
(ONLINE AND IN-PERSON)
Courses:
>Photovoltaic Associate >Photovoltaic Advanced >Photovoltaic Mastery (combined associate and advanced course) >Technical Sales >Sales Mastery >Solar Thermal >Specialty (Solar Fire Safety and National Electrical Code update training)
Why you should take them:
>Master key concepts in solar design, installation, and safety >Learn up-to-date industry standards and best practices >Prepare for NABCEP exams Possible careers:
Solar PV designer, solar installer, solar service technician, solar construction estimator, site surveyor, maintenance technician, solar sales consultant, solar energy advisor
BPI Certification Ecotech offers courses for solar professionals and more, including installation, sales, safety, and design.
(ONLINE AND IN-PERSON)
Courses:
>Building Analyst >Envelope Professional >Building Analyst and Envelope Professional combined >BPI Multifamily Building Analyst
q
Why you should take them:
>Learn to conduct safety and performance checks >Learn to complete an energy audit to BPI standards >Prepare for BPI Exams Possible careers:
Energy analyst/auditor, home energy rater, building assessor, envelope inspector, energy efficiency specialist, energy consultant
LEED Accreditation
(ONLINE)
Courses:
>Green Associate >Accredited Professional Building Design and Construction >Accredited Professional Operations and Maintenance Why you should take them:
>Understand how to improve resource and energy efficiency >Learn the LEED project process >Prepare for LEED exams
PHOTO: PIXABAY
Possible careers:
Architectural design, project manager, interior designer, construction coordinator, sustainability consultant/specialist, green infrastructure inspector gb&d
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gbdmagazine.com
GREEN BUILDING & DESIGN
Up Front Portfolio Typology Inner Workings Trendsetters Features Spaces Approach Punch List
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108 WSLA Insights
How diversity can pave the way for better business in the architecture industry.
109 The People Behind the Power
ComEd is improving business and emphasizing innovation.
110 Person of Interest
Johnson Control’s Clay Nesler discusses how smart technology and sustainability connect.
112 The New Age of Ceramics
Researchers are developing a 3D printing process for ceramics to save time, money, and energy.
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PUNCH LIST WSLA INSIGHTS
Diversity Paves the Way for Better Business Let’s skip the nod to diversity because it looks good and make it real— strategically. WHAT WE RISK
Kira Gould Writer and consultant Kira Gould CONNECT
In 1968, Whitney M. Young, National Urban League executive director, spoke at the AIA annual conference, calling out the profession for its civil rights failures. “You are not a profession that has distinguished itself by your social and civic contributions to the cause of civil rights,” he said. “You are most distinguished by your thunderous silence and your complete irrelevance.” He was speaking to a room full of white men. He may have shamed them, but progress in the field since has been slow. As of last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 28.6% of architects are women and 2.1% are black. Diversity in leadership is even lower, and a gender pay gap remains. The 2015 Census Bureau reports women architects earned 79.4% of what their male counterparts did. If we’re going to see real change, we need a new plan.
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When we don’t work toward diversity and inclusion, we suffer the effects of not having it. There seems to be an assumption that we can do a little work around the pipeline problem and “just wait,” and inequalities will even out. But that’s wrong. It’s been more than a decade since architect Lance Hosey and I wrote Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design. In it, we explored the links between design, gender, and innovation in architecture, engineering, and construction. It’s a conversation that continues today. The Equity by Design group has gained traction within the AIA with much-needed data collection; women in design groups are active in many cities; and conversations about equity and pay transparency are gaining momentum as big companies like Salesforce and Starbucks pave the way. But individual companies can move the needle, too. And they should. One problem is we are too focused on equity for equity’s sake. Bill Clinton said he wanted a cabinet that “looks like America,” and there is often talk in the industry about creating firms that “look like” the communities they serve. While that’s important, is it the only reason to embrace diversity? Many studies say no. A 2018 McKinsey & Company study reinforces the link between diversity and company financial performance and points to how companies “can craft better inclusion strategies for a competitive edge.” A Credit Suisse Research Institute study showed companies with more
female executives in decision-making positions resulted in higher market returns and superior profits. THE NUMBERS
An AIA study of the habits of high-performance firms revealed design firms that frequently win the AIA COTE Top Ten awards for projects that integrate design excellence and sustainability have far greater gender parity (46% women, 54% men) than the industry as a whole (31% women), and higher numbers of women in leadership (34% compared to industry-wide 20%). Women-owned firms are just 7% of the profession at large and make up 20% of repeat COTE Top Ten award winners studied. One positive result, beyond the quality of the work, is that compared to the rest of the industry these firms have significantly higher staff retention rates. This is beneficial for both organizational culture and the bottom line, since replacing staff can cost more than twice a person’s annual salary. Given that study after study shows financial performance is improved by more diversity, why aren’t AEC leaders demanding more diversity? THE CHALLENGE
Two decades ago, as the green building movement was gaining steam, many firms were doing it for the optics. Greenwashing was common, but it turned out redefining design excellence to include sustainability made good business sense. The studies are the writing on the wall—diversity is good business. Most firms are waiting for
diversity to happen naturally, but we need to encourage this strategically. I heard one leader from a large firm talk about leveraging his intentions to hire as many women as he could. The same strategy applies to people of color. It requires work, but some firms are putting in the effort and building relationships with universities to broaden their reach with students from different ethnic groups. This is not an affirmative action strategy that focuses on one individual versus another; instead the point is to strengthen firm culture. Big business is understanding that healthy organizations depend on and are enriched by a broad range of people, and studies continue to suggest diverse teams are smarter in many contexts. Organizations benefit from these differences, and this also means organizations are finding ways to embrace differences rather than suppress them. The big winners will be the firms whose CFOs tie diversity to the bottom line and prioritize the issue. Nothing motivates a firm like client demand, and as big business recognizes the value of diversity and inclusion, they’ll demand it from their consultants. Smart firms will show the way. Wouldn’t it be great if architecture turned out to be the field that proved how achievable this is? gb&d
Kira Gould is a writer and communications consultant. Her consultancy focuses on leading people and firms in the sustainability space. She received gb&d’s Women in Sustainability Leadership Award in 2015.
gbdmagazine.com
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The People Behind the Power How ComEd has cultivated a culture of innovation to improve business.
Cheryl Maletich Vice President of Distribution System Operations ComEd
The secret sauce of innovation is one-part technology and two parts people. I run distribution system operations and emergency preparedness for ComEd, the electric utility serving more than 4 million customers in northern Illinois. I’ve been fortunate to see the historic transformation of how the electric grid is managed, protected, restored, and connected. It’s happening at electric utilities all across the country, and I’m proud that ComEd is leading this charge. ComEd recently transformed its electric system from a static power system to a responsive and dynamic network model. ComEd has achieved five years of record reliability. We’ve cut the number of outages in half, we restore power twice as quickly, and we’ve done this while keeping customer rates steady. We’ve generated $1.5 billion in system savings since our grid modernization plan began six years ago. gb&d
What is driving this game-changing performance innovation? The knee-jerk answer is almost always technology. And, yes, technology has been the backbone of this transformation. Digital meters, smart substations, smart switches, communications technology, drones—the list of new technology could go on and on. We have previously unimagined capabilities at our disposal. But technology is just part of the answer. People are just as important to the ComEd renaissance. In the last six years, our leadership has made a concerted effort to create a culture of innovation. We’ve encouraged our employees to look at problems more broadly and to be inquisitive about ways to enhance performance. We’ve empowered them to ask is the “way we’ve always done it” actually the best way to do it? But employee-driven innovation can’t be force-fed. Innovation is a creative and voluntary exercise. It’s up to company leadership to create the right environment for innovation to germinate, sprout, and flower. STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP A CULTURE OF INNOVATION
1
Allow employees to see the big picture. Innova-
tive thinking is more likely to come from employees who see how their day-to-day job fits into the overall. Employees at every level of an organization should understand both the current state of the company and the industry, and also where it’s all going. The electric utility business is evolving rapidly, and it’s important our
employees understand the “why” and the “how.”
2
Define “calculated risk” and accept that failure is part of the process. The
greatest inhibitor of innovation is fear of failure. We all relish predictability and have a natural inclination to avoid risks. To create an innovative employee culture, it’s important to provide context for employees about acceptable risks and mitigated failures. By formally managing risks and building in a tolerance for failure, employees will feel liberated to think of problems in new ways and propose different solutions.
E 3 Another inhibitor of innovation is
mphasize that innovation comes in all forms.
the common employee perception that an innovation is only worth doing if it’s a huge, game-changing breakthrough that saves the company millions or makes some dramatic impact on performance. Of course, this isn’t the case. At ComEd, breakthrough innovations have been important, but I would argue that the smaller innovations, such as reinventing a single procedure or protocol, have had a greater impact overall.
4
Celebrate your triumphs.
The concept of innovation can seem theoretical and intangible for many employees. Some find it difficult to connect the abstract idea of innovation to their practical day-to-day jobs. That’s why it’s important to promote, publicize, and celebrate the innovations that have already
been accomplished. This provides a well-deserved pat on the back for the innovators, but, most importantly, it gives everyone else in the organization a helpful reference point and model.
5
Leverage middle management. I have 300 employ-
ees in my group. No matter how passionately I believe in innovation, I can’t drive the innovation mindset by myself. I rely on my team to carry the message to their own teams. It’s critical that all levels of management agree with cultural transformation efforts. For most of the last century, the electric system was largely immovable. The grid of the ’90s looked very similar to that of the ’20s. With this kind of operational stability, it was easy for any utility company’s culture to narrow in focus, for silos to develop, and for complacency to reign. After all, why encourage employees to think outside the box when everything that matters is inside the box? But that’s not the world we live in anymore. Constant change is the new norm. It’s not enough to have the right strategy. It’s not enough to have the bells and whistles of technology. Today, successful organizations must incubate an internal culture where employees are empowered and encouraged to be drivers of change, not just passengers. Cheryl Maletich, ComEd’s vice president of distribution system operations organization, is responsible for operational oversight and development of business strategy for ComEd’s DSO.
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Person of Interest Clay Nesler
Johnson Controls is making buildings smarter across the world. Interview by Julia Stone
Clay Nesler is vice president of global energy and sustainability at Johnson Controls. As a leader in the green building movement, he received USGBC’s Leadership Award in 2017. For Nesler, smart technology and sustainability go hand-in-hand. “The next generation of high-performance buildings will not only save energy and be net-zero carbon, but they will
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also improve the health, wellness, and productivity of people working there,” he says. “They’re going to be smart buildings.”
build has to be a certified green building, and that includes manufacturing facilities, R&D test labs, office buildings, and customer showcases.
gb&d: How are Johnson Controls’ initiatives affecting the green building industry?
gb&d: How is Johnson Controls promoting sustainable buildings globally?
Nesler: We’ve positively influenced the green building market by leading by example. Our Brengel Technology Center in Milwaukee was one of the first LEED buildings. We had an employee on the USGBC board when they developed LEED. He came running back to Milwaukee and said, “We have to do this!” When we looked at the draft requirements for LEED, we realized the things we’d been implementing in our facilities and for our customers for years lined up very well with the LEED rating system. We only had to make a few changes to the original design. The technology center was certified LEED Silver, and it was one of the first 12 buildings to be certified.
Nesler: We just put the final flag in our new Asia Pacific headquarters in Shanghai. It’s the first building in China to be triple certified—it’s LEED Platinum, China Three Star, and EDGE certified. It’s one of the most sustainable buildings, certainly within our portfolio, but also in China. It uses 48% less energy than a new office building in Shanghai that would meet the strictest local building codes. It’s a showcase for all of our technologies. It includes ice storage, battery storage, heat pumps, high efficiency chillers, solar PV.
gb&d: Has Johnson Controls certified other green buildings? Nesler: We were going to do a very minor boardroom update, but a simple update turned into building two new buildings and renovating two existing—all four are LEED Platinum. It’s now the highest concentration of LEED Platinum buildings on one campus in the world. What’s notable about that is the project started right when the 2008 recession hit. It would’ve been easy for our CFO and our CEO to say, ‘Two of our biggest customers and our largest competitors just filed for bankruptcy—is this really the best time to build LEED Platinum?’ But our CFO said, ‘We’ve been around for 130 years; we’re going to be around for another 100 years. We know these technologies pay for themselves.’ So, they produced a great campus. Shortly thereafter, we made a policy that every building we
gb&d: What have you done with the World Resources Institute? Nesler: I helped create the Building Efficiency Initiative. About 10 years ago, we created the Institute for Building Efficiency at Johnson Controls. It was very successful. We had the largest ongoing survey of commercial building owners in the world. But we wanted to go global. We had expanded in size and reputation, produced a lot of great research, and hosted events, but we found that we didn’t have the internal capabilities to truly go global. So we merged with the Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, which was a new initiative at WRI. I spend 25% of my time at WRI in Washington, DC and I’m supporting the Building Efficiency Initiative. Our program is called the Sustainable Energy for All Buildings Efficiency Accelerator. It started under the UN, and it’s focused on increasing investment in energy efficiency by local governments and subnational governments. We receive funding from the Global Environment Facility, which is part of the World Bank. WRI is the gbdmagazine.com
PUNCH LIST
coordinator and Johnson Controls is the industry co-convener. We’re putting a lot of time and effort into this. We’re going to double the number of cities we’re serving over the next two years. gb&d: How is the Sustainable Energy for All Buildings Efficiency Accelerator program advancing green buildings? Nesler: We’re working with 35 cities around the world along with 40 international partners that are large companies, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations like the World Green Building Council and the USGBC. We work with those cities to implement policies to drive investment in energy efficiency, implement a demonstration project that demonstrates the value of improved energy efficiency, and we help them put in place a measurement and tracking framework so they can report their results. The idea is just like the name. We find cities that have ambition and some capabilities but need to accelerate faster. So we help them implement national building codes, retrofit public buildings, and incentivize green buildings. We’ve found that in countries like Mexico where we’re working with two states and three cities, once one city like Mexico City puts in place an innovative project then Mérida wants to do it, and then Guadalajara, and then the state of Sonora. That attracts the attention of the national government, who then provides support to those cities. gb&d: What got you interested in sustainability? Nesler: When I was in college, the solar energy market was booming. Jimmy Carter was president and energy conservation was top of mind. There were a lot of incentives, and there was a booming market across the country. But throughout the course of my undergraduate degree, those incentives were taken away and the market essentially gb&d
“Every building operator, facility manager, and even building occupant is part of the solution.” dried up. But I was still very interested. I was in the solar energy club in engineering school at college, and I was taking energy policy classes. I was all set to be an energy policy wonk, and then the market went away. I thought, well, I love energy, so maybe if I can’t be on the supply side, I’ll go on the demand side. I ended up being a summer intern at Johnson Controls and loved the company. I went back and I’ve been there since. I started in research, and then I ran product development, marketing, strategy, and innovation. For about the last 10 years I’ve essentially been the chief sustainability officer. gb&d: How have smart controls changed in the last 10 years? Nesler: Technologies for buildings in general have changed quite a bit. Our building management systems don’t just start and stop things based on schedules. They’re really data analytics platforms that take data, convert it into information, and analyze the information to create insights that help facility managers optimize building performance. This smart technology is very important because some of it is embedded in the equipment and makes it more efficient, yes, but we now have technology that makes every building operator, facility manager, and even building occupant part of the solution. And frankly, buildings are getting more complex. We’re seeing this idea of hybrid systems where different spaces with uses for different people have different systems, and it’s going to be the controls that glue those things together
and coordinate the operations. It’s good to increase the efficiency of individual components, but we’re now seeing systems-level efficiency, whereby designing buildings with multiple components coordinated by intelligent controls and monitored by advanced analytics can deliver much better performance at about the same cost as buildings designed, built, and operated the old way. gb&d: What other sustainability efforts have you been a part of? Nesler: In addition to WRI, I’m the industrial advisory board chair for the US-China Clean Energy Research Center, so I’m very involved in our bilateral work with China to transfer knowledge and policies, so China, where half of all buildings are being built every year, can build their new cities and districts to be as efficient and sustainable as possible, hopefully using the most state-of-theart technologies available. It’s good for business and for the planet. I’ve always been interested in international aspects of green buildings. We’re very much involved in the Americas regional network, like Latin America and Central America. We’re really supporting the grassroots work there as well. We’re also turning Maui College into a net-zero carbon campus with 100% renewables. We’re working with seven of the airports, all the harbors, all the highways in Hawaii and putting in lighting and HVAC improvements, and really contributing to their goal of reducing fossil fuel use by 50%. gb&d september–october 2018
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PUNCH LIST IN THE LAB
The New Age of Ceramics The Far-From-Equilibrium Materials Laborary is working on a 3D printing process for ceramics and other groundbreaking research. By Julia Stone
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Professor B. Reeja Jayan is transforming how we process ceramics through her groundbreaking electromagnetic field-matter coupling research at the Far-FromEquilibrium lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
B. REEJA JAYAN Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University â Ceramics can withstand extremely high temperatures. As a result, melting them requires a lot of thermal energy, which makes manufacturing ceramics costly and difficult. That’s why B. Reeja Jayan is researching new ways to process ceramics at lower temperatures by using electromagnetic waves.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
gb&d: How are you using electromagnetic waves to further 3D printing technology? Jayan: Ceramics are materials that cannot be easily melted, so you can’t use current technologies where you use a laser to melt a metal or a polymer and fuse together parts—this approach is not going to work with ceramics. The idea is to look at new science that can enable ceramics to crystallize and grow, and for the particles to come together in a process called sintering at low temperatures. Electromagnetic fields have been known to realize some of these behaviors at low temperatures. It’s not known why they can do this. Locally, they could be creating extreme temperatures—we don’t know because there’s currently no way to measure these local temperatures precisely. In some cases, depending on the energy provided by the field, there could be coupling with the electronic structure of the material itself. These questions drive our research on using electromagnetic fields to process materials like ceramics, which conventionally would take a lot of thermal energy to process and build into parts.
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“We’re taking ceramics out of the stone age and bringing them into new age materials, devices, applications, and functionality.” Being able to melt ceramics easily would decrease the material’s carbon footprint and expand its use and capabilities in the manufacturing industry—from cell phone batteries to prosthetics. Jayan and her team are also developing a 3D printing process for ceramics to help save time, money, and energy.
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IN THE LAB PUNCH LIST
We hope our findings can enable a type of additive manufacturing or 3D printing process for ceramics. gb&d: How did you get involved in this research? Jayan: During my PhD, I worked with ceramics that go into batteries like the ones you have in your cell phone. There, too, we encountered the same problem—you can’t process ceramics at low temperatures. When I started my independent career, it gave me a unique space to explore because it was such a challenging problem, and a lot of people in conventional ceramics are not thinking in this direction. gb&d: What are some of the practical applications of 3D printing ceramics? Jayan: Let’s say we could make a printer for ceramics parts. If we can do this at a fraction of the cost, time, and energy conventional ceramic processing requires, then we would be saving a heavy environmental footprint. This is our longterm goal. We are specifically looking at some of these industrial carbide-type materials. There is a joke that while these materials are made in the significant quantities the world requires, some cities and countries are getting polluted heavily. Lowering the energy and environmental footprint is the key need when we push ceramics into emerging applications. Let’s say for something like desalination or keeping a building or room climate controlled, maybe we can integrate these materials directly into the structure. That way you’re saving costs in terms of the fabrication and you’re getting better functionality. Ceramics are very stable chemically and environmentally. They don’t react or corrode. A lot of times they will last for many years with minimal maintenance. But they require a hightemperature process so you don’t see them getting used in buildings as easily unless it’s a concrete slab. You don’t see them everywhere. We aim to structurally integrate ceramics into existing buildings to add new functionality, but at the same time keep the cost the same. gb&d: How do you see this research evolving? Jayan: One of the main ideas we have is to integrate ceramics with polymers. I mean they’re different materials—one melts at really high temperatures and the other melts at low temperatures, so if we could find some sort of midpoint where we could process these together, then we can go everywhere from the structure of a building to maybe the fibers on clothing and start integrating these materials together. That is the interest we have long-term—taking ceramics out of the stone age and bringing them into new age materials, devices, applications, and functionality. gb&d september–october 2018
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PUNCH LIST
Directory & Index ADVERTISERS # 3DR, 80 3dr.com 510.990.8096 A ALPOLIC Materials, 30 alpolic-americas.com 800.422.7270 Apex Farms Corp, 24 apexfarming.com 302.307.3668 ArtisTree, 88 artistreehomes.com 512.923.7822 B Backwoods Bridges, 72 backwoodsbridges.com 850.835.1304 C Corradi USA, 68 corradiusa.com 972.466.0824 E Ecotech, 104 ecotechtraining.com 888.450.4684 Elkay, 76 elkay.com 630.574.8484
V Vidaris, 102 vidaris.com 212.689.5389 PEOPLE & COMPANIES A Adams, Drew, 99 Adamson & Associates, 96 Adobe, 13 Allied Tube & Conduit, 26 Amberly Glen, 72 American Institute of Architects, 108 Andre, Joe, 28 Apple, 15 Austin Central Library, 64 B
Bamboo Hardwoods, 39 Barnes, Gary, 68 Beacon Park–Lumen Restaurant, 54 BeCause Water, 76 Beilharz, Will, 90 Bouladier, Veronique, 42 Brandt, Kate, 13 Brengel Technology Center, 110 Building Performance Institute, 104
ENERGI Fenestration Solutions, 42 energifenestration.com 888.368.6314
C Callas, George, 104 CDI Studio One, 16 Chambers, Jim, 65 ComEd, 109 Crawford, Dale, 26 Cummins, 34 Cypress Valley Canopy Tours, 90
Enscape, 20 enscape3d.com +49 721-132 060 60
D DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, 34 Deborah Berke Partners, 35 Digneo, Vince, 13
H Hampton Products, 46 hamptonproducts.com 800.562.5625
E Elkwood, 14 EllisDon, 100 Enel Green Power, 13 Evergreen Brick Works, 99
M Mermet USA, 84 mermetusa.com 866.902.9647 mmcité, 34 mmcite.com 704.576.2224 S Schott, 40 us.schott.com 914.831.2200 Steel Tube Institute, 26 steeltubeinstitute.org 847.461.1701
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T Trinity Bamboo, 38 trinitybamboo.com 888.248.6538
september–october 2018
F Facebook, 15 Farmery, 14 Fenergic, 42 Fifth Avenue Company, 14 Future Cities Canada, 99 G Goodham, Tom, 38 Google, 15 H
Hampton, Dave, 42 Harford, Rick, 33 Hawala, Sam and Erica, 91 Hegmon, Radek, 34 Hosey, Lance, 108
I Iris Virtual Reality, 14 J Jayan, B. Reeja, 112 Jiffy Lube, 32 Johnson Controls, 110 K Karasek, David, 34 Keegan, David, 39 Kelley, Kim, 42 Kessel, Kraig, 32 Kraido, 32 L Lake, David, 64 Lake|Flato, 64 Larsen, Dagmara, 60 Leo, Alex, 24 Lesneski, Traci, 60 Leventhal, David, 90 LiMandri, Robert, 102 L.R. Kimball, 16 Lyde, Arti, 76 M Maletich, Cheryl, 109 Marois, Jean, 42 Merge Design, 14 Mitsubishi Chemical Composites America, 31 Montalbo, Sandra, 108 Moses, Jim, 31 MSR, 60 Mullis, Andy, 74 N NABCEP, 104 NADAAA, 96 National Urban League, 108 Nesler, Clay, 110 Newman, Ben, 90 New Mexico State University, 76 O
R Ratio Architects, 35 Republic Conduit, 26 Roberson, Kiley, 61 S Schander, Thomas, xx Sheetz Inc., 16 Shemwell, Bob, 66 Shepley Bulfinch, 60 SketchUp, xx Smith, Jonathan, 66 Smith, Rhea, 43 Sun Control Textiles, 84 T Thomas, Matt, 76 Tianjin Binhai Library, 62 Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute, 62 Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, 99 Touloukian, Theodore, 54 Touloukian Touloukian, 54 Tropical J’s Incorporated, 68 Tulsa City-County Library, 60 U University of Toronto, 96 USGBC, 110 W Watson, John, 76 Western Tube & Conduit, 26 Williams Homes, Inc., 43 Wheatland Tube, 26 White, Sean, 104 Winyah Rivers Foundation, 84 Y Young, Whitney M., 108
O’Leary, April, 86 Ohana House, 91 One Spadina, 96 Ontario Heritage Trust, 99 One York, 97
P Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, 50 Playa Viva, 90
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