Richard Stockton College of New Jersey: Green Addition to the Pinelands

2008

Jul

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The Richard Stockton College expansion project is an excellent case study for how to build green in a small space while acknowledging development's impact on its natural surroundings. Richard Stockton was originally constructed in 1973 on New Jersey’s Pinelands National Park Reserve before the land was protected. The Pinelands include over one million acres of farms, wetlands, and forest and are located in the center of the southern part of the state; the Reserve was established in 1973 by an act of Congress. Expanding Stockton's existing site footprint would have translated into additional costs and time through the NJDEP/Pinelands permitting process. Instead, the school decided to simply build on top of its existing one-story F-Wing laboratory building.

Each of Stockton's academic buildings (A through N) are connected in order to increase their density and were originally conceived with their impact on the Pinelands in mind; the addition on top of the F-Wing was thus consistent with that original intent. Designed by Philadelphia-based Cubellis, the 28,000-square-foot expansion includes a student center atrium, eleven classrooms, a lecture hall, two multi-level computer labs, study lounges, and faculty offices. The main design concept driving the addition was to create general academic space so the classrooms were designed to be multi-use. The addition earned LEED certification shortly after the project’s completion back in June of 2006.

Specific green design features in support of the LEED rating include solar shading to minimize heat gain, occupancy sensors for lighting, water conservation fixtures, 90 percent sustainably harvested wood, and a 27 kilowatt rooftop solar panel array, which produces 10 percent of the building’s energy requirements. Perhaps the most interesting green installation is the building’s Aquifer Thermal Energy System, or ATES, which uses water drawn from an aquifer on site. Depending on the season, chilled or heated water runs through a series of pipes throughout the building, minimizing the amount of energy necessary to cool or heat the addition.