green architecture

If you were fortunate enough to spend the Memorial Day holiday out in the Hamptons, one sight you might have missed is the Old Stone Highway House in East Hampton. Completed back in July of 2007 by New York City-based Berg Design Architects, the 2200-square-foot house's architectural program is a "modern interpretation of the Long Island agricultural vernacular" that simultaneously "incorporates the use of environmentally low-impact building technology."

Berg's client sought a design that both suggested a Long Island barn where the client had summered and incorporated green building principles. The result is a simple, yet sophisticated, fusion of traditional and modern architecture that is grounded in sustainable design. The house's western cedar siding and concrete block exterior emphasizes the building's angular geometry which is kept in check by finished interior surfaces.

Far Hills Country Day School in Far Hills, New Jersey opened its new gymnasium at the start of the 2008-09 academic year and the facility is an interesting blend of architecture, site orientation, and sustainable principles. Designed by New York City-based Butler Rogers Baskett Architects, the 19,000-square-foot facility features a unique design that maximizes the school’s location in the hills of Hunterdon County. Part of the gymnasium is actually built into the side of one of those hills, both reducing its overall mass and allowing the facility to self-regulate its temperature throughout the year thanks to the surrounding soil’s relatively constant 55 degree temperature. BRB also specified a cool roof; the gymnasium should use close to 36 percent less energy than a comparable facility. The project is seeking LEED Silver certification and is on track to earn 8 of the 10 available energy credits under LEED-NC Version 2.2.

Lambertville, New Jersey-based Hone + Associates Architects recently saw its LEED Gold-hopeful Oldwick Animal Hospital open in Tewksbury Township, New Jersey. Hone is no stranger to green design; it designed the Willow School in Gladstone, which was the first LEED-certified private school in the country and only the second LEED building in the state of New Jersey. The 4200-square-foot, 2-story Oldwick Animal Hospital would be the first small veterinary hospital in the country to earn LEED certification from USGBC. Veterinarians Janisse Cailles and her husband, Glenn Likus, will be resident at the hospital and retained a veterinarian architect to create the building’s floor plan, before turning to Hone specifically for its green design expertise. After considering a solar system which Ms. Cailles says the township "wasn’t wild about," the couple installed a closed loop geothermal heating and cooling system, "even though it cost more to install." Other green features include LEED-standard low-VOC paints and sealants, FSC-certified wood products, a graywater system, and locally sourced materials.

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.