Land+Living: Green Building Breakthrough

Books, Green — January 10, 2006 Posted by James

A free book that shows how to attain Platinum LEED on a conventional budget

Portland based Interface Engineering has published an illustrated guide demonstrating how to achieve Platinum-LEED on conventional building budget in a FREE 48-page book which uses their current project for Oregon Health and Science University as a case study.

Busting a key economic myth, Interface Engineering of Portland, Oregon (has) engineered a top-level green building on a conventional budget, opening the way for other large scale projects to achieve high performance at standard cost. The firm also released an illustrated guide sharing the secrets and principles behind the project, formally known as The Center for Health and Healing at the River Campus of Oregon Health & Science University.

Link: Green Building Breakthrough
Via: Groovy Green - Green Building: Delivering Champagne on a Beer Budget

Center for Health and Healing project team:
Architect: GBD Architects
Engineer: Interface Engineering

About the project:
The Center for Health & Healing will be an anchor to a new neighborhood and the centerpiece of Oregon Health and Science University’s new River Campus. The building will generate a good percentage of its own electricity. Through the engineering design, it provides:

61% more energy efficiency than required by Oregon code and LEED standards.
56% reduction in potable water use vs. a similar conventional building.
100% on-site sewage treatment with rainwater and wastewater being harvested for toilets and landscaping, saving 15,000 gallons a day from reaching the city’s overburdened combined sewer system and cutting the owner’s future water and sewer bills.

Innovative features such as sunshades that double as solar power generators; on-site micro-turbine plant to generate electricity; natural ventilation; displacement ventilation; radiant cooling; chilled beams to replace air-conditioning (first in a large building in the U.S.); etc.

4 comments

Comments (4)

gk — March 25, 2006
green

every thing that has stated is impressive, but if explained with some illustrations it would have been more useful and understandable, then only it is easy to understand hoe these features get integrated on the structure...

Tom Weinert — April 5, 2006
Northern Arizona University building promotion

Good morning, I am putting together a poster for the opening of a LEED silver certified engineering building here at NAU. I am trying to compare the energy savings compared to convientional buildings of similar size and usage. Any ideas where I can gather some general data? thanks for your help. Tom

James — April 5, 2006
Green data

Tom, some of my favorite resources for this kind of info are the following: http://www.usgbc.org http://www.organicarchitect.com/pubs (featured on L+L) http://www.greenmatrix.net (featured on L+L) See also this article originally published in the Economist for some general info: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5457 Best of luck.

Rei Herleif — August 13, 2007
eieleif@h551.com

You don't know how lucky you are bo. Rei Herleif.