Featured Articles

$94 Million UCSF Building Aims for LEED Silver

3 mins

SAN FRANCISCO — Construction of a new $94.5 million Institute for Regeneration Medicine Building at University of California, San Francisco, is scheduled to begin this summer.

The 73,000-square-foot building will house the university’s regeneration program and offer space for collaboration among scientific and medical researchers.

Rafael Vinoly Architects designed the building to fit along a narrow hillside between a surface street and UCSF Medical Center. The building will be terraced and will follow the arc of the hillside.

Read More

University Building’s Passive Design Earns LEED Silver Certification

5 mins

KENNESAW, Ga. — The passive design concepts at Kennesaw State University’s new social science building help the facility earn LEED Silver certification for its passive design.
The design of the 164,000-square-foot building features window placement that avoids direct light, building materials with recycled content and strategy orientation of the facility.

Most of the green aspects of the building were based on an intuitive, efficient design, says Bill Clark, a principal for Stevenson & Wilkinson Stang & Newdow, Inc., the design firm for the project.

Read More

Community Ties

11 mins

Green Schools Offer New Lessons

In the new age of green buildings, input from school officials, parents and the community is crucial to ensure that a new facility is designed with components that are the most beneficial to the people it serves. Environmentally friendly bells and whistles are rendered irrelevant and sometimes become costly add-ons if they are not understood, accepted and harnessed by the community.

Read More

Greenbuild Swells With Capacity Crowds

3 mins

CHICAGO — Greenbuild, the U.S. Green Building Council’s annual conference, swept through Chicago last week, cramming the facilities at McCormick Place with more than 21,000 attendees and 850 exhibitors.

The conference site appeared overwhelmed at times with limited space for educational seminars and attendees waiting in long lines to hear speakers and purchase food and beverages.

Read More

NASA Space-Flight Center Puts Home Planet First

3 mins

Greenbelt, Md. — NASA broke ground on a $56 million eco-friendly Exploration Sciences Building at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center here.

The 265,500-square-foot research-laboratory and office building, which is registered for LEED Silver certification, will house personnel from the astrophysics and solar systems exploration divisions and the office of the directorate.

Read More

Texas Medical Center Features State’s Largest Green Roof

9 mins

WEBSTER, Texas — The Houston metropolitan land market and simple long-run economics pushed Jacob White Construction to develop the three-story East Medical Center project around environmentally sustainable technologies that may win LEED gold certification with the largest living roof in the state, according to officials.

But company president Jeff Mickler also sees the project, which features two 48,000-square-foot medical buildings, as a marketing tool that can differentiate Jacob White in the market.

Read More

New Sidwell Friends Middle School Certified LEED Platinum

15 mins

Sustainable design concepts can take hold in a variety of different ways. Some school planners are forced to take a subtle approach, incorporating design techniques that offer the most cost-effective solutions for communities that are still not sold on the legitimacy of the green building. Other planners have the luxury of stretching their arms and grasping new ideas that push the boundaries of what can be done to produce high-performance, sustainable schools.

Read More