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Think
green in building design
by
Lauren Shepherd
For Virginia Business
July 2003
Nancy
Kiefer could hardly believe her nose. When she stepped
into the new offices of the World Resources Institute
in Washington, D.C., four years ago, there were no foul
odors or industrial-strength vapors wafting from the
newly painted yellow walls or bamboo floors in the reception
area. “There was nothing,” says Kiefer, manager
of facilities and office services at WRI.
Kiefer
hasn’t stepped into many buildings like it since.
The institute is a “green” building, designed
to be environmentally friendly and usable. Also known
as sustainable buildings, architects strive to make
them run like an ecosystem, with each component working
with nature, rather than against it. Instead of wasting
electricity generated from fossil-fuels in air-conditioning
and heating systems, green buildings use alternative
sources of energy, such as hydrogen-powered fuel cells.
Taking advantage of the sun as a light source, green
architects prefer open work spaces to closed-door offices.
At the institute, office doors are manufactured from
compressed wheat straw fiberboard — an agricultural
waste product — and recycling bins are made from
on-site recycled sheet metal.
The
techniques first made an appearance abroad before being
adopted on the environmentally friendly West Coast.
But it wasn’t until the 1990s that sustainability
became a national catch phrase. In Virginia, government
is taking the lead in building green. Arlington County
now requires builders to include sustainable design
into contracts — the first county in the country
to do so.
Responding
to that directive, Greg Lukmire, principal in charge
at The Lukmire Partnership Architects in Arlington,
is currently working on the new 34,000-square- foot
Arlington County Parks and Recreation Building. With
the county’s requirements in mind, rainwater will
collect directly into cisterns, irrigating the building’s
plants, and the building will feature natural ventilation
and a window for every possible employee. Natural wood
will also be a centerpiece of the building’s interior
design. Even a small portion of the roof will be green,
with a small area for solar heating. Compared to the
rest of the state, “Arlington is way ahead of the
game,” Lukmire says.
Another
major practitioner, some say a pioneer, in green design
is Ken Wilson, a principal at Envision Design, an architecture
firm in Washington, D.C. He’s drawn such clients
as Greenpeace, the global environmental organization
that wanted to practice what it preaches when it needed
new offices. “It was an opportunity to combine
the work I do day to day with my own passion for the
environment,” he says. “Not all of our clients
want green buildings, but we introduce them to it.”
The
benefits of a green office building go beyond protecting
natural resources. With improved air quality and an
open-air, outdoor atmosphere for workers, green architects
tout decreased absenteeism and increased productivity
in the buildings they design. At Greenpeace, Wilson
says turnover decreased 60 percent after the staff moved
into its new green space. “If you really want to
save money, make your people more productive,”
Wilson says.
In
fact, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, an
environmental research and consulting firm, energy-efficient
green designs can increase productivity from 6 percent
to 16 percent. In 1998, the institute studied 80 examples
of green buildings. At one of the projects — the
renovation of a 76,000-square-foot concrete warehouse
into a distribution headquarters — VeriFone realized
a 65 percent to 75 percent energy savings and a 45 percent
decrease in absenteeism. The company redesigned the
building to include natural light, a new air filtration
system, non-toxic materials and energy-efficient equipment.
Indeed,
economic savings are a major selling point when it comes
to green design, says William McDonough, a Charlottesville
architect. He doesn’t try to convince business
owners that saving the environment is worth the few
extra bucks it takes to design a new headquarters or
rehab a factory. Instead, he focuses on lowered energy
costs, big profits and the creation of a product that
will be the envy of competitors. By talking the talk
of business, he has had success with some major clients,
including Ford, Nike, and furniture company Herman Miller
— quite a coup for the University of Virginia professor
and founder of a small design firm.
McDonough’s
firm, called William McDonough and Partners, has attracted
attention with projects that include designing a grass
roof for a Gap office complex in San Bruno, Calif.,
and a $2 billion redesign of the River Rouge, Mich.,
Ford car factory. But despite McDonough’s achievements
and green buildings popping up 90 minutes north in the
nation’s capital, private industry in Virginia
has been slow to catch the green fever.
One
Virginia firm, though, is taking green design techniques
overseas to Eastern Europe, Africa and the Caucasus.
CMSS Architects, headquartered in Virginia Beach, is
designing three new embassies for the U.S. State Department
in Abidjan, Cot d’Ivoire; Yerevan, Armenia; and
Sofia, Bulgaria; scheduled to be completed in 2005.
The buildings will feature recycled materials, daylighting,
and landscape plant selections that don’t require
irrigation systems. “This is the first opportunity
we’ve had to apply these principles,” says
CMSS principal John Crouse. “We saw this as a trend.
Be it rather slow, it’ll catch on.”
The
embassies will cost more than $50 million each —
about mid-range for an embassy compound, including the
chancery building, residential areas, restaurants and
shops. In fact, most green design projects fall into
the middle of the price range — about $44 per square
foot. They can’t be built quickly or for the cheapest
cost. But, it’s an investment, green builders say,
which pays dividends in energy savings and worker happiness.
“There are some upfront costs on some of these
things, but on the other hand, there are some payoffs
within three to four years,” says Crouse.
One
way to measure whether organizations and companies are
buying in to the green trend is to look at the list
of projects slated for LEED certification, the industry
standard of green architecture. Although the list of
already-certified projects is slim — almost 40
— the number of projects attempting to get certification
has grown exponentially, proving that the country is
starting to pay attention. Virginia has only 10 projects
awaiting certification, far behind California’s
73 projects and on par with North Carolina. Although
Virginia may be far from the top of the list, Dan Slone,
a partner at McGuireWoods — a law firm in Richmond
representing the Green Building Council as well as green
architects and developers — says it’s only
a matter of time before Virginia makes its mark in green
design. “Ultimately, it will be a very strong component
in Norfolk and Richmond,” he says.
Despite
Sloan’s optimism, it’s too soon to say whether
green buildings will really take off in Virginia. Wilson
believes that within five years, green design will become
commonplace in architecture. “It’s heading
there rapidly.” But unless private industry follows
the example of government, it could be quite some time
before Virginia’s businesses clamor for grass roofs.
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