Page 84 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATED DESIGN: THE NEW YORK TIMES BUILDING 61

project. Other than providing the vision and design leadership, the architect’s major
role is to act as an orchestra leader for the process. Most of the consultants were
local and familiar to us, as it was important that we know their capabilities and work-
ing styles, enabling us to wave the baton and say, “We need the ‘piccolos’ now, the
‘drums’ next, then followed by the ‘violins’.” It’s very much a part of our normal
role, but particularly so in this project because of its uniqueness and that it involved
so many people.

Another international design project involved a new building at Northern Arizona
University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona. The smallest of the three state universities in
the state, NAU was the first to commit to a LEED Platinum goal for its new Applied
Research and Development (ARD) building. The designers were Hopkins Architects
of London and Burns Wald-Hopkins Shambach Architects of Tucson, Arizona. Robin
Shambach was the project architect for the Tucson firm. Here’s her report on how inte-
grated design helped this project achieve its high-performance goals.*

The design architect, Hopkins Architects Ltd. is a London firm; they worked with the
London office of Arup. The whole team was involved in the project from the very
beginning to the very end. In the beginning of the project, Hopkins Architects took
the lead on the design side with the Arup engineers in the U.K. They started with site
analysis and climatic research for the specific bio-climate of Flagstaff.
[Later], the emphasis moved from the design team to the executive team and that was
our office and Arup, San Francisco. With Arup, it was a smooth transition to the San
Francisco team. Hopkins Architects were still involved and collaborative because we
were implementing their design.
The team looked at all of [the preliminary site studies] and then met with the engi-
neering group to identify key strategies that were established very early on. Those
strategies included things that impacted the architecture and the engineering; that’s
really the key point of integrated design. Those things were the use of thermal mass,
passive solar orientation, low-velocity air distribution (an underfloor air distribution
system), the integration of photovoltaic and other alternative energies (solar hot
water) and introduction of daylighting. Those key concepts really drove the building
design including the selection of the materials, the structural frame (cast in place
concrete) and the orientation of the building (south, southeast in a very long thin
form). The building section is critical to the success of the project, which includes a
long, thin floorplate cut in sections. The three floors of occupied spaces are connected
by a gallery. That gallery allows for the introduction of daylight from the south and
southeast. The negative aspects of solar gain (in adding to air conditioning demand)
were mitigated with shade structures integrated into the building. It allows that gallery
space to be a tempered space by using the thermal mass of the structure. That was all
driven by those key concepts that were established very early on with the engineer-
ing team. The building design really came out of that.

*Interview with Robin Shambach, Burns Wald-Hopkins Shambach Architects, February 2008.