GreenClips.73 06.04.97 UTILICORP GREENS MCKIM, MEAD & WHITE "Preservation and environmentally sensitive design complement each other very well," says Kirk Gastinger, principal of Gastinger Walker Harden Architects. His firm designed the renovation of McKim, Mead & White's New York Life Insurance Company building for Kansas City's UtiliCorp United. To meet its need for more office space, the utility company decided to renovate downtown instead of building in a suburban office park. The building's existing features made it an ideal candidate for an energy efficient upgrade — its thick masonry walls contribute thermal mass and the alignment of its windows across shallow floor plates allows natural cross ventilation and reduces reliance on artificial light. The architect added light shelves and curved ceiling soffits along the perimeter to reflect daylight on workstations below and refit the windows with operable units of energy efficient, low-E insulating glass. Gastinger's team salvaged a vaulted skylight above the central ground-floor lobby, refinished its cast iron frame, and reused its original glass panels. The architect elected to wash the brownstone, brick, and terra-cotta exterior with a mild soap-and-water-based restoration cleaner made by Prosoco. — Architecture, May 1997, p. 176, by Raul A. Barreneche. CONTRACTOR-FINANCED ENERGY IMPROVEMENTS Renovating 500,000 Federal buildings by 2005, the US government will cut its energy bills by one quarter through an Energy Department program called Financing Renewable Energy and Efficiency, FREE. Private companies will install energy-efficient lamps, motors, air conditioning systems, and heating equipment in Federal buildings at no cost to the Government. In return, the companies will receive part of the savings from the lower electricity bills for a designated number of years. The Energy Department has tried this approach before but found bidding the contracts building by building cumbersome. So for these contractor-financed energy improvements, the Government will use a standard contract and list of vendors — Honeywell, Inc., who devised the concept of contractor-financed energy improvements, Johnson Controls, ERI Services Inc., and two corporate teams. One corporate team is The Bently Company/BMP Team, Puget Sound Energy, and Macdonald Miller Company. The second is Enova and Pacific Enterprises. For more information call the Federal Energy Management Program, 800.363.3732. — The New York Times, May 22, 1997, p. A11, by Matthew L. Wald, and The Green Business Letter, June 1997. EUROPEAN DESIGNERS GREEN HOTELS The hotel industry is a wasteful one but a few European designers are reducing its environmental impact. When former agricultural engineering student Emanuele Vitrano refurbished one of his family's hotels he spent four years researching eco-friendly products. Vitrano's Hotel Ariston looks and works like any other stylish Milan hotel except for its parquet floors made from wood scraps reclaimed from boat yards and furniture factories, a reception floor made from reclaimed marble chips, rugs and mats from coconut hair, and bedspreads from linen. Instead of dust-gathering pictures, murals are painted right on the walls. Instead of wasteful air conditioning, a filter system allied with in-room ionizers purifies room air. Vitrano and architect Serena Omodeo Sale have now started their own environmental consultancy called Zeta Iniziativa to market Sale's eco-friendly furniture. And the firm Barr Gazetas of London and Athens is designing an environmentally sensitive hotel for Virgin on the Greek island Hydra. "Although Greece and the like may have lots of sun, they are loath to use more than basic ways of capturing it," says Alistair Barr. "In Greece, we use a German system which runs tiny, water-filled tubes under the artificial surface of a tennis court. Two courts can pre-heat water for a 100 bedroom hotel and its swimming pool." — FX International, Issue 1 Spring 1997, p. 48, by Veronica Lyons. WATERLOO GREEN HOME, THREE YEARS LATER In 1993 Natural Resources Canada completed the Waterloo Green Home, one of ten homes its Advanced Houses Program built to demonstrate the marketability of super-efficient, environmentally friendly houses. But the 2,500 square-foot Waterloo, Ontario home's most innovative technologies have also been the most troublesome. The Green Home's prototype heating and ventilation system uses a natural gas furnace and rock-bed heat storage chambers to exchange heat between incoming and outgoing air. But the system developed by the Canadian Gas Research Institute operates at only 65 percent efficiency, not at the 85 percent design target, causing the home's overall energy use to exceed design predictions. To reclaim basement space the system occupies, homeowners Rolf and Helga Thiessen may replace it with a standard high-efficiency furnace and heat-recovery ventilator. Following repeated construction damage, the Green Home's custom-designed hydronic cooling system that draws cistern rainwater through a ground loop and into the house never performed as intended. Ultimately resolved, a noisy, unreliable pump also plagued the water supply from the cistern to toilets, outdoor faucets, and the clothes washer. Nonetheless, the environmentally minded Thiessens, who moved in with their three small children in May 1994, are quite pleased three years later. — Environmental Building News, May 1997, p.6, by Nadav Malin. NORTHERNERS REFINE STRAW BALE DETAILS The insulating properties of straw bale construction are attractive, but moisture is a major concern in northern climates like Minnesota's. "The problem is how to deal with moisture created in the house that wants to move to the outside and condense," say Laura Corbin and Ken Geisen, owners of the state's first code-approved straw bale house. While a bale of straw has a "wonderful ability to transpire moisture in both directions," explains Jonathan Query, principal and partner of the Minneapolis firm IIIAD, "we don't know how much moisture a bale can take on before it reaches a saturation point and begins to rot and decompose." To deal with this uncertainty, Query and his clients adopted a "let-it-breathe strategy" for the Corbin-Geisen house. Instead of lining its walls with a continuous vapor barrier, Query designed the walls to handle transfer of moisture through the bales. He sleeved all plumbing perforations in the kitchen and bath and detailed the bales at all electrical and exhaust perforations, at the ceiling and floor, and at window and door openings. Query also chose an exterior plaster more porous than the interior lime-plaster skin. "The idea being that whatever moisture does get into the wall will have an easier time getting out through the exterior," says Geisen. Meanwhile, architect Rick Peterson, co-founder of the Minneapolis-based Community EcoDesign Network, hopes to launch the first hybrid insulated straw bale system for prefabricated housing in northern climates. — Architecture Minnesota, May/June 1997, p. 42, by Camille LeFevre. BOOK OFFERS BEST DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES Grounded in a series of exemplary case studies, a book titled Best Development Practices: Doing the Right Thing and Making Money at the Same Time offers the best ideas on making communities work. Four well illustrated and explained checklists — Best Land Use Practices, Best Transportation Practices, Best Environmental Practices, and Best Housing Practices — make up much of the book. For nearly every item, the authors note research documenting its benefits. Case studies of seven master-planned Florida communities and five vibrant, pedestrian friendly traditional towns provide effective examples throughout the text. The American Planning Association published the 178-page book written by Reid Ewing with MaryBeth DeAnna, Christine C. Heflin, and Douglas R. Porter. It is available from the APA, 122 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 1600, Chicago IL 60603 for $12.95 plus $8 for shipping and handling. — Environmental Building News, May 1997, p. 15.