Institute Recognizes 2018 Beyond Green Award Winners
WASHINGTON, D.C. – (RealEstateRama) — The National Institute of Building Sciences recognized the winners of the 2018 Beyond Green™ High-Performance Building and Community Awards Wednesday, January 9, 2019, at its Annual Awards Banquet, held during Building Innovation 2019: The National Institute of Building Sciences Seventh Annual Conference and Expo at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C.
A 2018 Beyond Green™ Honor Award, First Place in the High-Performance Buildings Category, went to Delta Electronics (Americas), Ltd. for its new headquarters in Fremont, California. Delta’s state-of-the-art, 178,000-square foot headquarters stands as a testament to its commitment to providing innovative, clean and energy-efficient solutions for a better tomorrow through products that allow for a reduction in energy consumption among corporations, homes and communities across the globe. To effectively demonstrate this and to serve as an example of sustainable corporate design that could be emulated across other enterprises, Delta set the ambitious goal of designing and building the first certified LEED Platinum office in Fremont without compromising functionality, productivity or aesthetics.
“Delta’s commitment to its community and employees through this high-performance building is evident,” said Nancy McNabb, AIA, Beyond Green™ juror and principal at McNabb & Associates. “Demonstrating how its products can contribute to high-performance buildings across the country is equally admirable.”
Every design was done purposefully…As a result, our facility is 60 percent more energy efficient than conventional buildings of similar size,” explained Delta’s Ruth Chao, corporate affairs manager, Delta Electronics (Americas), upon accepting the award. “Beyond energy efficiency, we also focused on community when designing our Americas Headquarters. Since we’re right next to the San Andreas Fault, we’ve designed the building to be 20 percent above the California earthquake standards, so in case of catastrophe, this building will act as a shelter. We’re also right next to the San Francisco Bay, so we raised our elevation to be 13 feet above sea level in preparation for the 100-year flood.”
Representatives from the Sonoma Academy’s Janet Durgin Guild & Commons project embrace upon receiving a 2018 Beyond Green™ Honor Award, First Place in the High-Performance Buildings Category. Pictured from left are Institute Chairman Joseph Donovan; Adam Woltag, AIA, LEED AP, partner, WRNS Studio; Rick Theis, Sonoma Academy trustee; and Pauline Souza, AIA, LEED Fellow, partner and director of sustainability, WRNS Studio, who served as lead architect.
A 2018 Beyond Green™ Honor Award, First Place in the High-Performance Buildings Category went to Sonoma Academy for its new Janet Durgin Guild & Commons facility in Santa Rosa, California. Since its inception, Sonoma Academy recognized the opportunity to connect resiliency, circular economy, resource efficiencies and social justice. For the Janet Durgin Guild and Commons project, a two-story, 19,500-square foot learning facility, the team employed a nature- and human-centered design approach focused on fresh air, daylighting, sustainable systems, healthy material selection and local resources. The project sought to achieve LEED v3 Platinum, Living Building Challenge and WELL Building Standard Education Pilot benchmarks. It is the first project in Sonoma County and one of only a few nationwide to simultaneously reach these benchmarks.
“The Sonoma Academy project stood out by setting and achieving multiple ambitious goals that reflect each of the Beyond Green™ priorities,” said Jason Hartke, Beyond Green™ juror and president of the Alliance to Save Energy. “In doing such an elegant job of balancing these many noteworthy objectives, it is worthy of an Honor Award.”
“It’s about…making sure everything is evident to the students, because that’s who we are trying to connect to,” said Lead Architect Pauline Souza, AIA, LEED Fellow, partner and sustainability director at WRNS Studio, upon accepting the award. “It’s about everything doing service.”
A 2018 Beyond Green™ Award of Merit in the High-Performance Buildings Category went to the Alice Ferguson Foundation’s Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Environmental Education Center in Accokeek, Maryland. Blending in with its surroundings, the 3,000-square foot education and event building was designed to achieve zero-energy and -water performance. Challenging site conditions encouraged the design team to look to nature for design solutions to address abundant groundwater and sub-par solar access. The building achieved full Living Building Challenge Certification and LEED Platinum benchmarks.
“The Foundation’s mission parallels the ideals expressed in the Beyond Green™ Awards,” said Arpan Bakshi, Beyond Green™ juror and associate at Foster + Partners in London, England. “Their ability to capture these ideals in the project is worthy of recognition.”
“In Maryland, there’s actually a requirement that every student graduate environmentally literate,” said Lori Arguelles, president and chief executive officer of The Alice Ferguson Foundation, which runs the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Environmental Center . “We draw from nature because we believe that nature is the very best classroom to teach anything…The idea is that when you’re in this building, you don’t feel like you’re inside. You feel like you’re outside.”
A 2018 Beyond Green™ Honor Award, First Place in the Innovations for High-Performance Buildings and Communities Category went to Dow and its Olympic Movement Initiative: A Low-Carbon Legacy. As the Official Carbon Partner of the Organizing Committees of Olympic Games Sochi 2014 (Russia) and Rio 2016 (Brazil), Dow partnered with the Organizing Committees to balance their carbon footprints. Building on the success of these programs, Dow was appointed the Official Carbon Partner of the International Olympic Committee in 2017. Under this partnership, Dow is taking the carbon reduction framework beyond the Games and the host cities to develop tailor-made carbon mitigation programs around the world. To date, six projects have targeted applications in the built environment. Through its carbon mitigation projects, Dow already has delivered 4.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emission reductions, of which 3 million tonnes came from built environment projects.
“The jury was impressed with Dow’s use of the international stage of the Olympics to bring attention to a global issue like climate change,” said Beyond Green™ Juror Jason Hartke.
“It’s like a nice match made in heaven…We have the technology, we have the opportunity, we have the need and we combine it all together in this space,” said Mike Mazor, PhD, Fellow, Carbon Mitigation, Olympic & Sports Solutions at Dow, upon accepting the award. “We can go back and say, ‘If you do this, and you measure these variables, you will have greenhouse gas emission reduction, you will have energy savings, you will have dollar savings,’ so it’s really quite a robust program.”
A 2018 Beyond Green™ Award of Merit in the Innovations for High-Performance Buildings and Communities Category went to the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) for its Community Microgrids Planning Academy. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs provided a grant to the NJIT Center for Resilient Design to create an online educational program—the Community Microgrids Planning Academy—to help New Jersey mayors and their staffs understand and begin to develop community microgrids in their jurisdictions. Using networked buildings to power resilient community microgrids is a new but rapidly growing trend across the country. The Community Microgrids Planning Academy will help communities join this trend in community resilience and sustainability.
“Microgrids are an important element of sustainability and community resilience,” said Beyond Green™Juror Nancy McNabb. “Other states and institutions should follow NJIT’s lead in providing education on this topic.”
“At the community scale…individual buildings within the community become power generators,” said Deane Evans, FAIA, executive director of the Center for Building Knowledge at NJIT, upon accepting the award. “That’s a really interesting paradigm shift.”
During the Beyond Green™ portion of the Institute’s Annual Awards Banquet, the recipients each gave slide presentations highlighting their award-winning topics. The winners will be featured as case studies on the WBDG Whole Building Design Guide®. To view case studies of Beyond Green™ winners from previous years, visit the WBDG.
