Page 57 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

34 GREEN BUILDINGS TODAY

■ Green or LEED-compliant roofs (used in 84 percent of Platinum projects and
66 percent of Gold projects, versus 63 percent in LEED Silver projects)*
■ Use of certified wood products (in 48 percent of Platinum projects and 42 percent
of Gold projects, versus about 19 percent in all LEED Silver–certified projects) †
■ Rapidly renewable materials such as cork and bamboo flooring (used in 28 percent
of Platinum projects versus less than 5 percent of other projects).
■ Daylighting design (used in 84 percent of Platinum projects, 51 percent of Gold
projects and only 41 percent of Silver projects).

Many of these systems and approaches aren’t common because they have fewer
opportunities (e.g., hard-to-restore sites in dense urban areas), experience supply-
chain difficulties or require greater initial cost. The primary reason of course for the
lack of use of any green building measure is the higher initial cost, followed by the
relative inexperience of design teams working with various systems and products.

THE CASE FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE BUILDINGS
Owners and developers of commercial and institutional buildings across North
America are discovering that it’s often possible to have “champagne on a beer budget”
by building high-performance buildings on conventional budgets. The Harvard
Blackstone Renovation was reportedly built to LEED Platinum standards for no initial
capital cost increase. The OHSU building in Portland, Oregon, was built for a net cost
premium of about one percent, according to the developer. As we’ll see in this book,
many private developers, building owners and facility managers are advancing the
state of the art of sustainable design in commercial and institutional buildings through
new tools, techniques, and creative use of financial and regulatory incentives.
Leland Cott of Bruner/Cott & Associates was the lead architect for Harvard’s
Blackstone Office Renovation, which cost about $10.5 million. Originally the project
started out with a Gold goal, one that was contained in the Request for Proposal for
architectural services. The goal for a high-performance outcome set in motion a whole
range of options, according to Cott, that resulted in the Platinum certification. For
example, a further exploration of stormwater management options resulted in a plan
to recapture stormwater and add extra landscaping to help with infiltration on site. One
of the challenges for upgrading a 100-year-old brick building was how to insulate it,
to improve comfort and energy savings. The team ended up putting icynene insulation
on the inside so that moisture could continue to move in and out of the building
according to the season, without condensation on interior walls. According to Cott,
Harvard reports 40 percent energy savings in the renovated building. The project
included a strong charrette that developed a mission statement and a “green pledge.”
Cott believes that the advent of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software will
be a very progressive tool for achieving sustainable outcomes, since it will be easier

*Jerry Yudelson, Marketing Green Building Services: Strategies for Success, 2006, (Amsterdam: Elsevier/
Architectural Press), p. 129.
†
Ibid.