New school built on sustainable design
| • | Graphic (opens in new window): Environmentally conscious construction on a large scale |
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
Punahou School hopes to set a new gold standard with the construction of its new Case Middle School.
The $62 million school, set to open in August 2004, includes dozens of "sustainable" design features in hopes that it will be the first new building in Hawai'i to earn gold certification as a "green" building.
The earth-friendly features in the school — from self-regulating lights to waterless urinals to school lockers made out of recycled milk cartons — could add 5 percent to 7 percent to construction costs but will more than pay for themselves in energy and other savings over the lifetime of the building, officials said.
Even so, that's not why the school is putting out the extra effort, said Steve Piper, director of the the school's physical plant.
"We're doing it as a learning institution because it's the right thing to do and to make it a learning tool, too," he said.
The project is part of a burgeoning movement in the building industry in Hawai'i and around the world to incorporate principles of sustainable development, sometimes described in its most basic form as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
Once limited to small-scale or "backwoods" projects, sustainable design is catching on at almost every level of the industry. Among other big projects that are actively including some elements of the philosophy are the University of Hawai'i Medical School in Kaka'ako, a new state energy laboratory on the Big Island and the planned National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency's National Marine Fisheries Services Honolulu Laboratory in Manoa.
At Punahou, staff members took an across-the-board approach to embedding the complex with green thinking that they hope will rub off on the students.
Some of the design solutions seem obvious:
The middle school will consist of nine, semi-open buildings situated to take advantage of prevailing trade winds during much of the year. Water for landscaping will be provided from a natural spring on campus, which until now has sent an estimated 35,000 gallons a day directly into the ocean.
Other choices involved high-tech things that sometimes seem like they've been beamed down from a "Star Trek" episode, including a new thermal energy storage system, which takes advantage of cheap electricity rates at night to make ice that is used to cool the buildings the next day.
"These are things that have never been done before on a building of this size in Hawai'i," said architect John Hara, who also designed Punahou's Science center and the new wing of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Only 16 buildings worldwide have received the gold certification since the U.S. Green Building Council launched its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program in 2000. More than 800 projects planned and in development have declared an intention to seek the certification, which involves a rating system based not only good building practices but a documented paper trail that can reach 6 inches high.
Although green building concepts are as old as a well-worn copy of the 1960s Whole Earth Catalog, the LEED program has given professionals the opportunity to document their successes like never before.
"We might have had the ideas before, but there was never any objective standards to say whether a building was sustainable. Now, we've got the measuring tool," said John Fullmer, president of the American Institute of Architects Honolulu Chapter, which recently received a gold rating for its work in renovating a space in the 100-year-old Stangenwald Building under a separate LEED program for commercial interiors.
Those involved with the middle school project say they didn't start out with the idea of receiving a certification; the idea just began to take hold as they realized they already were incorporating many of the sustainable design principles.
"Once things started to crystalize in our mind, we decided to seek out a consultant to validate what we already were doing," Hara said.
That's the way it often happens, said Andrew Andersson, a project manager with Arup, an international design and engineering company brought in to help Punahou with its sustainable design elements and to verify the process for LEED certification.
Smaller clients often need to be sold on sustainable design, but some like Punahou, which is going to both build and manage the school, can see the benefits and long-term cost savings from the start, Andersson said.
Sustainable design has come of age in big projects in part because so many new environmentally conscious products are available.
"Suddenly, you have a choice of products and can get suppliers and contractors competing with one another to be part of the project," said Randy Overton, assistant director of Punahou's physical plant.
Members on the development team even went as far as Michigan to test the new waterless urinals, which have never been used in Hawai'i and could save about 1,500 gallons a day. Punahou stopped short, however, of putting composting toilets into the new school complex; "We weren't sure we could sell that to the faculty," Overton said.
Building products used at Punahou include recycled steel, "fly ash" left over from O'ahu's coal-burning power plant and furniture made from recycled products. Even the trees that had to be moved to make way for the school were ground up and saved to be used as mulch on the new campus.
Many of the innovative features were driven by educational needs, rather than architectural or economic ones, Piper said.
Planning for the school began more than three years ago and included a 16-member steering committee of teachers, administrators and staff who researched new educational concepts and decided how to integrate them into a green building.
The classrooms, which cascade down a Punahou hillside on the lower campus, will have an open-air, transparent look that adds to the green feeling and contributes to a natural learning experience.
"With all the windows, you'll be able to look from one side of the building, across a courtyard and into the next area," Hara said. Teachers will have the option of leaving windows open or using air conditioning when the weather demands.
At the new AIA offices downtown, everything from the carpet to the ceiling paint is made from recycled material — and then labeled so that visitors can learn more about sustainable design. The carpets are leased rather than purchased so they can be taken back by the manufacturer and recycled again after their normal lifespan.
The total budget on the AIA project was about $100,000, no more than it would have cost to overhaul an office using older, less environmentally friendly methods.
"It took a lot of effort, but the feeling was that we had to put our money where our mouth was when we fixed up our new office," Fullmer said.
While the green building is fairly new, everyone agrees it's a concept that's going to last.
"It's finally slipping into everyone's consciousness, and the general awareness factor keeps rising," said Joe Ferraro, a founding partner of Ferraro Choi, a Honolulu architectural firm that helped with the design of the AIA offices. "Eventually it will be the only way to go."
