• As sustainability continues to be a top priority in the commercial real estate industry, BOMA International compiled a list of Top 10 Efficiency Tactics for Commercial Buildings – including regular energy audits, installing solar shades, instituting tenant energy awareness programs and more. The number one tip: measure and manage energy usage and water consumption.

John Hancock Center

• Deutsche Bank AG may be setting a new precedent in the commercial real estate industry as it sells off pieces of the John  Hancock Center. Segmenting the 100-story, 856,000 square foot architectural landmark has boosted the building’s value to an estimated $410 million.

• Congratulations to Hines Interests and 300 North LaSalle as the building received LEED Platinum certification. The 57-story, 1.3 million square foot building’s green features include river-water intakes for condenser water, a recycling program, low-flow water fixtures, a green roof and motion detector lights. Hines also offers its proprietary Green Office program, to assist in giving tenants options to reduce their carbon footprint.

• 

  333 W Wacker Drive

  Global research firm Mintel set up its North American headquarters along the Chicago River with a 30,000 square foot space on the 11^th floor of 333 W. Wacker. The firm was drawn to the building’s contemporary design and is utilizing a new open office concept of unassigned seating, with no private offices and a primary work zone of open bench desks with 215 work stations.

• Hillshire Brands Co. is moving its headquarters to the West Loop at 400 S. Jefferson. Chicago-based real estate investor and developer Sterling Bay Cos. brokered the nearly $100 million transaction, making it the highest price per square foot deal for a Chicago office building since the beginning of 2012.

What CRE or Chicago news headlines from the past week captured your interest? Leave us a comment and let us know.

“Being a green business doesn’t mean just building a green building—it comes down to our operations,” co-owner Dan Rose said in a video about the certification. “We’re looking at energy consumption, lights, LED fixtures, recycling programs and guest education.”

The hostel is the fourth building in Chattanooga to earn LEED Platinum, following GreenSpaces, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport and Volkswagen, Crash Pad leaders said.

Architects Blythe Bailey and Taylor Bowers with River Street Architecture designed The Crash Pad, and Collier Construction built it.

The hostel features green technology that guests use each day, leaders said.

It also has solar panels, a green roof, low-flow faucet fixtures, gray water filtration systems and “green education” plaques throughout the hostel to inform guests of the buildings features, leaders also said.

Much of the building is made from reclaimed wood and bricks.

In other Crash Pad-related news, leaders said recently they are planning a bar and restaurant next door to the Southside hostel.

Source

Let’s talk about BREATHING first, which naturally brings up VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds.  We mentioned them briefly in our last post (Dressing Your Walls in Used Blue Jeans).  As a reminder, Volatile Organic Compounds are emitted as gases from certain solids or liquids. VOCs include a variety of chemicals, some of which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects, and they are emitted from a wide array of products, including building materials as paint and carpet.

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To that end, you’ll be glad to know that when you visit us at our new showroom, we’ll have used a zero-VOC paint (from Sherwin Williams), and of course it fits our LEED® needs, too!  This counts for points under “Low-Emitting Materials: Paints & Coatings,” of course!  We’ve also kept the space light and airy, using mostly white with some gray.

Now we head over to looking OUTside of our building, and again, keeping it “SoCal light,” always with an indoor/outdoor feel.  Believe it or not, it’s also a goal of the LEED idea called “Intent for Views” that this be the case!  In the showroom part of our lot, we easily accommodate this with a “direct line of sight to the exterior of the building for 90% of the regularly occupied floor area.”  This way no one feels like they are shut out from the outside world, nor in that weird “Las Vegas casino” vibe of never knowing what time of day it is!  (We’d love to say we hit the LEED credit on this one, but because the service area is considered part of our building—and we couldn’t get the views there—we didn’t.  If the showroom were on its own, we would have.  C’est la vie!  We’re making up for it in other places!)

Finally, kind of hand-in-hand with the views concept, daylighting is a huge deal to us, and we’ve actually written about it in a prior post (Let there be LIGHT!).  Our light fixtures have sensors that respond to the amount of natural daylight that is present, so that we don’t overuse artificial lights.  We know we talked about it before, but we DO love this aspect…and it’s definitely something you can consider implementing in a home or office.

So hopefully when our employees are working every day, and when our clients and neighbors come by, everyone can appreciate the sense of lightness, and easier breathing!

Residential Architecture: OS House by Johnsen Schmaling Architects:  ”..despite being rectangular in volume, the interior of the residence is a compilation of intricately carved niches visually connected by a series of sliding or stationary glazed panels .  These niches include unique indoor/outdoor spaces such as elevated patios, a shaded main level terrace, and a glazed vestibule adjacent to the dining room.  The organization capitalizes on the fantastic views afforded by the site..Perhaps the most notable architectural feature of the OS House would be the rainscreen: a system of thin concrete panels suspended between steel channels.  In addition to being a radical architectural statement, this assembly creates an 8” deep ventilated envelope that contributes to the superior performance of the residence.  Apart from being a radical formal departure from the existing neighborhood context, the OS House is is one of the first LEED Platinum residences in the Midwest.  The project utilizes a variety of sustainable materials including a ventilated rainscreens, high-efficiency glazing, low-flow water fixtures, and permeable surfaces to mitigate stormwater runoff.  These materials, coupled with innovative technologies such as a free-standing PV array, photovoltaic roof laminates, and a deep-well geothermal heating/cooling system allows the residence to operate off the grid for most of the year (and even function as a net producer during peak energy harvest)..”  Sustainability, LEED Platinum certification, solar energy, extensive glazing, natural light, views, terrace and patios, cantilever, indoor/outdoor and contextual sensibility..

designalog: contact

image: © Johnsen Schmaling Architects; article: Rizor , John . “OS House / Johnsen Schmaling Architects” 13 Aug 2011. ArchDaily. <http://www.archdaily.com/157666&#62;

It’s been a while since we’ve done much mountain biking, but today we decided it was a good day for a change of pace from the road.  We dusted off the knobby-tired bikes and headed down to the Enterprise South Nature Park in Chattanooga to explore some of the mountain bike trails.

But first, a little history…

In the early 1940′s the Army Corps of Engineers built the original facilities for the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant.  The plant was originally built to support World War II military efforts, and operated as a TNT manufacturing facility through 1977 - producing up to 30 million pounds of TNT per month during peak production years in the 1960′s.

Within the past decade, the state of Tennessee and Hamilton County turned the site into a combination of industrial property and the 2800-acre Enterprise South Nature Park, which opened to the public in 2010.  The Park is adjacent to the recently opened state-of-the-art Volkswagon manufacturing facility.  Along with bringing several thousand jobs to the area, the VW plant has achieved the world’s first LEED-Platinum green building certification for an automotive plant, making them a great environmentally responsible partner for the public access parklands.

Within the 2800-acre Nature Park is an extensive multi-use trail system – from pedestrian hiking paths, to both paved bike routes and single-track mountain biking trails – in a wide range of difficulty levels.  There are also plans to include equestrian trails into the mix.

One of the more fascinating things to see as you ride the trails are the collection of abandoned munitions “bunkers”, big caverns with concrete walls with huge steel doors, many of them built into hillsides.  I think there are close to 100 of them, some locked and sealed, but we came across at least one that was open.  A little creepy, in an interesting way.  Mark’s theory is that most of the trail system evolved from the bunker access roads and pathways.  Definitely possible.

We rode two of the intermediate/advanced mountain biking loops – the TNT Trail and the Log-Rhythm Trail – and Mark had some fun playing on the bridge course.  The trails are wonderfully maintained, and even “enhanced” in places.  There are a couple of log and bridge courses, along with a number of fun (engineered) “whoop-y” sections of the hillside trail (I am sure that is a technical mountain biking term).  Enough rocks and climbing to make you work, and some great descents. Yeah, fun.  And a nice reminder that mountain biking uses a very different skill set of increased agility, weight-shift and balance than road biking.  Actually, it often reminds me of skiing, especially through the tighter turns in the trees.

We are definitely going to do this again…  And if you are in the area, it is definitely a place worth visiting – biking, hiking or however you choose to explore.

What makes it so “green”?

Re-Use Design: The 110+ year old building was checked for weak points, they were carved away to allow for re-use form to emerge. The center of the building maintains a visual connection to every space in the building.

Water Efficiency: No city water is used for the landscaping. Storm water is either absorbed by the green roof, collected in three large rain barrels, or directed into a rain garden, where the toxins are removed by plant material before reentering the ground water system.

Energy-efficiency: The Green Building saves 30,000 pounds of CO2 a month, more than enough to offset the carbon footprint of all its employees’ vehicles. Thanks to 81 solar panels, a 1,100 gallon ice storage system, and twelve geothermal wells 225 feet underneath the building, The Green Building’s total off-grid energy efficiency is up to 68% and it outperforms Kentucky energy codes by up to 65%

Images and info via 1. 2.

Eclectic Living Home, Louisville, KY

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To earn LEED certification, the project must satisfy all prerequisites and qualify for a minimum number of points to attain the established ratings. Once the basic prerequisites of the program are satisfied, applicant projects are then rated according to their degree of compliance within the rating system. The Green Building Council rates structures based on their environmental impact and other criteria such as energy and water consumption, use of raw materials, and recycling rates. Certifications are awarded according to the following scale:

Certified: 40-49 points
Silver: 50-59 points
Gold: 60-79 points
Platinum: 80 points and above

The new 1,400-acre facility where the U.S. Passat is built has been fitted with sophisticated technology as well as simple measures to conserve energy and water. These include using rainwater collected on the roof to cool welding equipment and flush toilets, constructing an ultra-clean paint shop, which is estimated to save 50 million gallons of water over 10 years, and installing LED lighting that uses two-thirds less energy.

“Volkswagen is committed to the US market,” said Jonathan Browning, president and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. “During the worst recession in the past century, we never wavered with our investment of a billion dollars to create this world-class facility. This certification underscores Volkswagen’s commitment to engineering excellence.”

The Volkswagen Academy was also certified by the USGBC as a Platinum LEED facility. The primary purpose of the Volkswagen Academy is to prepare new employees for work at the new plant. In conjunction with Chattanooga State and Tennessee Tech, the Academy also offers an Industrial Technology degree and an apprenticeship program. “We are very pleased that the Volkswagen Academy has been Platinum LEED Certified because this reflects the level of excellence that we expect and produce in the academy,” said Hans-Herbert Jagla, EVP of Human Resources.

The Volkswagen Chattanooga plant produces the all-new 2012 Passat, which has recently been named Motor Trend magazine’s 2012 Car of the Year, as well as having earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IIHS) Top Safety Pick rating, the highest possible from the non-profit safety research organization. The Passat TDI – the

The VCU Rice Center has been name the Region’s Overall Project of the Year by Midatlantic Construction Magazine. The “Best of 2009″ Awards Program recognizes the center for its exceptional design and construction.

“The Walter L. Rice Education Building blends exceptional design with careful construction,” according to a news release by the magazine. “It is the first building in Virginia to be awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED platinum certification, and received 54 out of the required 52 credits.”

The $2.8 million research center is located on 342 acres on the north bank of James River in Charles City, Virginia. The center was opened in 2008.

Exterior, Armstrong Headquarters

In April of 2007, Armstrong World Industries earned the fifth US Green Building Council’s LEED Platinum rating ever given to an existing building for the re-design of their headquarters facility in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  The project achieved this rating through the implementing the following sustainable features:

Armstrong Headquarters, interior

• Use of daylighting, flourescent lighting and occupancy sensors
• Energy effecient HVAC systems
• Installation of covered bike area
• Installation of preferred parking spaces for hybrid vehicles
• Use of alternative energy sources, such as wind power
• Implementation of a recycling program
• Establishment of policies surrounding the use of non-toxic cleaning products
• Use of low-flow toilets and waterless urinals

Sources:

 Eberly, David A. “LEED EB(R) Case Study: Achieving Platinum and the Energy Star(R) Label for Corporate Headquarters.” Energy Engineering (2008): 23 – 28.

US Green Building Council. Project Profile: Armstrong World Industries Corporate Headquarters. 2008. 28 January 2009 <www.usgbc.org>.               

Posted by: Maggie Zilke