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 2009 Savings By Design Energy Efficiency Integration Awards |
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2009 Savings By Design Energy Efficiency Integration Award Winners
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For their achievement in combining architectural elegance with sustainability and energy efficiency, six California nonresidential projects received awards of recognition from the 2009 Savings By Design Energy Efficiency Integration Awards program. This year, two projects stood out among the rest to take the top recognition level – Award of Honor. Two other outstanding projects received Awards of Merit and two noteworthy projects received special citations. The jurors commented that the best projects respond well to climate and have an excellent contextual response to their surrounding area, while maintaining maximum comfort. They added that a building’s expression is what sets it apart as award-winning sustainable design. Honor Award: Portola Valley Town Center, Portola Valley, CA Architect: Siegel & Strain Architects and Goring and Straja Architects This redeveloped 11-acre Town Center houses a library, community hall, and town hall offices. Originally the site of a 1950’s public school, the new center uses reclaimed vertical redwood cladding, which links the buildings to the two large redwood groves also located on the site. The old school buildings were deconstructed, with wood being remilled into paneling and ceilings. The remaining concrete and asphalt were used as base rock. The high slag concrete keeps 100 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and the passive design strategies used include daylighting, exterior shading, natural ventilation, and thermal mass.
“This program is about integration and this building is just a great example of the complete integration of sustainability with architecture,” Jim Gabriel, Savings By Design juror and of Hanna Gabriel Wells in San Diego, commented on the project. “You’re seeing great architecture that just so happens that, among the many wonderful things it does spatially and formally, it’s also performing and creating a sustainable approach, but at no cost to the overall experience of the environment.”
The town center also made use of efficient mechanical systems, such as radiant heat and nighttime cooling, to keep energy use to a minimum. Three of the five buildings on the site have roof-mounted photovoltaic panels that generate a total of 76 KW of on-site power. This power generation, as well as the many other aspects of efficient design used, results in buildings that use 53% less energy than Title 24 compliant buildings.
Honor Award: 355 11th Street, Architect: Aidlin Darling Design Originally a warehouse, this historic structure is slated to become San Francisco’s first Gold-level LEED-NC building. The owner, who is also the general contractor, occupies the entire second floor, with the third floor leased to design professionals. Plans are in place for a restaurant and bar to occupy the first floor and exterior courtyard.
A collection of metal and glass apertures, sensitively inserted into the original structural frame, provide the requisite functions of entry, exit, light, and view necessary for the building’s new mixed-use program. On the east and west façades, the new metal skin is perforated with fields of small holes that mitigate solar heat gain while enabling cross-ventilation of the interior. The building’s north façade was preserved and refurbished - the existing timber and concrete frame sandblasted to reveal the warmth and texture of the original materials.
“This design team and developer should be commended for taking a found resource and making it truly relevant in today’s architectural dialogue, not only from an environmental and sustainability standpoint, but also from a design standpoint,” Jorden Segraves, LEED AP and Savings By Design juror, noted.
The building utilizes natural ventilation and passive cooling and its 30 kW photovoltaic array provides 79% of the annual electricity use of the structure. Based on the Title 24 metric, the building touts a compliance margin of 25.1%.
Merit Award: San Francisco Friends School, Architect: Pfau Long Architecture This K-8 school purchased the historic Levi Strauss Blue Jean Factory originally built in 1906. The design objectives were to create a positive learning environment, express the school’s Quaker-based values through simplicity of design, and demonstrate a high level of environmental stewardship. The exterior of the building was left virtually unchanged, while the interior space was transformed into classrooms, meeting rooms, faculty offices, a cafeteria, library, gymnasium, black box theater, reception area, and student gallery.
The key to the school’s design is the introduction of four passively activated thermal towers, each of which draw air up and out of one of the four quadrants of the building. These towers improve air quality and night cooling rates as well as reducing energy use, CO2 emissions, and noise levels. Bonnie Bridges of Boor Bridges Architecture and juror for Savings By Design stated, “Dealing with an adaptive reuse of a historic building and integrating as much energy efficiency, sustainability, daylighting, and passive systems is commendable. They have integrated into their school curriculum the sustainability of the building, and they did a lot of recycle and reuse.”
The original wooden beams from the ground floor were reused as the treads for the entry stairs and the original maple floors were preserved as a historic element of the structure. Skylights were reintroduced into locations where they were previously located in the historical building. The site’s sustainable features and elements resulted in 17.3% greater performance than the Title 24 baseline.
Merit Award: Environmental Nature Center, Architect: LPA, Inc. With a limited budget and larger than life dreams, this two building structure was designed to co-exist with the site and the delicate habitat that has been cultivated in the area. Effective site placement and orientation, material selection, storm water management, and water conservation techniques were the most sustainable solutions possible for the tight budget. A generous donation allowed for the inclusion of a roof top photovoltaic array, which provides all of the onsite power requirements for the center.
Heating and cooling systems were eliminated from this project, allowing the spaces to be conditioned naturally through simple ventilation techniques. A dramatic 25’ high, north facing glass wall allows natural light to filter through the public spaces while also incorporating automatic dimming systems. Bioswales and retention ponds treat storm water, while the landscape pallet is an extension of the indigenous California plants already on site. “There’s a real simplicity in the use of materials and how they integrated that into the design,” Paul Schroeder, Delawie Wilkes Rodrigues Barker principal and Savings By Design juror, commented. “They allowed that to be part of the experience of the building too. You got to understand how the components of the building work together and they didn’t try to mask it. The building orientation is also very appropriately placed for the site.”
The buildings’ 40 kW PV system creates a “net zero energy” facility and achieves 45% interior lighting energy savings and an 80 % reduction in exterior lighting power compared to Title 24 standards. To date, the project has produced approximately 2.5 times the renewable energy that it consumes. Citation Award: Orinda City Hall, Architect: Siegel & Strain Architects This new city hall unites departments previously spread throughout the city and is within walking distance of transit and downtown on a newly created infill site. High performance started with climate based design, including daylighting and natural ventilation while minimizing heat gain. The narrowly restricted site allowed only a slight reorientation of the building away from the hot southwest exposure.
“The architect has really dealt with the environmental aspects of the project well, and they were very strong in conveying the integration of natural ventilation, daylighting, solar shading, orientation, and thermal mass while also dealing with a challenging site,” said Jorden Segraves, LEED AP and Savings By Design juror. Since this small office building uses relatively little water, the architects concentrated on conserving water on site. The creek at the edge of the site was preserved and drainage from paving was directed away from the creek. Landscaping was also designed to return the site to a native, pre-development palette of plants, minimizing the need for irrigation.
The building also incorporates significant amounts of green materials that reduce embodied carbon, including recycled steel, 70% slag concrete, cork and linoleum flooring, formaldehyde free desktops and case work, and recycled glass countertops. The high performance structural system meets the requirements of an essential services facility with four exposed steel frames intended to “rock and recover” in the event of a major earthquake. This LEED Gold project demonstrates the city’s commitment to environmental stewardship. The mixed-mode mechanical systems run on natural ventilation whenever conditions allow, reducing anticipated energy use by 72% better than Title 24.
Citation Award: University of California, Santa Barbara Student Resource Building, Santa Barbara, CA Architect: Sasaki Associates, Inc. This student resource building has become a community hub and source of campus pride that reflects the diverse interests of its users. The LEED Silver building is comprised of two three-story wings flanking a vertical forum space. The forum opens to the multi-purpose room, which in turn opens to a “free speech” plaza for celebrations and public events.
Sustainability was a resolute goal for the project and every effort was made to promote a healthy environment. The building’s orientation is ideally configured for daylighting, climate control, and natural ventilation. Operable windows along the south façade and the forum’s clerestory windows enhance and increase the natural ventilation through the building. “This is a project where starting with a really clear diagram for the building resulted in the ability to integrate quite a few sustainable features,” Jim Gabriel of Hanna Gabriel Wells and Savings By Design juror stated. “It’s a simple idea but it’s strong and it’s bold and it evolves into a cross section that works for them. They carried their design intent out to the exterior and, to me, this is just a good, solid piece of architecture.”
Placed at a major campus intersection, the building is a component of the campus that is met with 10,000 students, staff, and faculty daily. It is used as the students’ “living room” to meet, study, and socialize, while also using 15.1% less energy than Title 24 standards. |
