New York

Modular design-builder New World Home has earned the first LEED Platinum rating in New York State for a prefabricated house. The 2400-square-foot house, in New World's Carson style, was assembled in Jeffersonville, New York in upstate Sullivan County and is just the second LEED Platinum home in New York (after an affordable single-family house in Schenectady that we've not covered here at gbNYC copped the honor earlier this year). The company's designs aim to blend in with the local architectural vernacular by "converging traditional design with next generation green technologies and highly efficient modular manufacturing methods;" the Jeffersonville home is no exception. Its tight thermal envelope, though, should save 65 percent in energy consumption over a conventional house, according to the project's LEED for Homes provider Steven Winter Associates. All of New World Home's projects are built with FSC-certified lumber under a scant 60-90-day production schedule; other base green features include:

Designed by Syracuse-based Ashley McGraw Architects' Advanced Building Studio, the Liberty Central School District's new Media Center in Liberty, New York could become the state's first net zero energy school district building after it breaks ground this summer. The 4000-square-foot Media Center should open in time for the 2010 school year; many of the project's green design strategies are those which critics of the recent NAIOP study (which we wrote about extensively over at GRELJ) decried as lacking in the study's methodoloy, which concluded that 30 to 50 percent reductions in energy consumption over ASHRAE 90.1-2004 were not practicable for most owners given current technologies and corresponding payback periods. For example, Ashley McGraw implemented a comprehensive site orientation and daylighting strategy, designing the structure's shape and windows to provide sufficient natural north light to the project's interiors, as well as low-level south- and west-facing windows which will reduce both solar heat gain and corresponding cooling loads.

The Monroe County Public Safety Lab is certainly one of the more esoteric LEED projects we've stumbled across recently. The four-story, 45,000-square-foot crime lab is will be located in downtown Rochester, rising from what is currently a parking lot. The lab- which is currently cramped into a 19,000-square-foot building that dates from 1963- serves law enforcement agencies in the City of Rochester and eight surrounding counties; 67 percent of its work comes from Rochester itself, which is contributing $1 million to the project. The lab performs DNA analysis of crime scene investigations and stores significant data on computers that are causing the space crunch at the existing lab. Green features at the $30 million facility will add around $700,000 to construction costs and include a white roof, recycled-content and locally sourced structural building materials, a graywater irrigation system, and reserved parking for hybrid vehicles and bicycles. Pike Company has been lined up to perform construction management and LEED consulting services for $139,000.

We're still tracking what's happening with the Sag Harbor-based firm's 132 North Main Street project, but in the meantime want to point you to Bates Masi + Architects' Re-Cover House, which will be featured in the April 2009 issue of Dwell magazine. The firm actually designed the house nearly 35 years ago as a Long Island vacation home in Amagansett but recently executed a renovation and addition for a new set of owners; the project earned a 2008 AIA Peconic Chapter Merit Award for Architecture/Renovations & Additions. In order to boost the house's square footage, its original south wall and deck were removed but cyprus wall boards and cedar wood decking therefrom were preserved and recycled into new siding, stair treads, scrim material, and risers. By preserving such materials, the firm was able not only to complete the project by using very few new materials, but also preserve the original design intent of the house across both the renovated interior walls and exterior cladding, which was almost completely constructed originally from twelve-inch wide cypruss clapboards.