Sustainable Institutional Buildings: The New Landscape Architecture Facility

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Sustainable Institutional Buildings The New
Landscape Architecture Facility
T.P. Cathcart P.O.
Melby Biological Engineering Landscape
Architecture Mississippi State
University
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In 2002, the new Landscape Architecture facility
was completed.
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Five years in planning, it is the first MSU
campus building designed specifically to minimize
operational energy use.
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After 1 year of monitoring

• Total energy use is 15 kWh / ft2 per year.
• By comparison, 2 nearby conventionally designed
  buildings use 45 and 47 kWh / ft2 per year.
• The other buildings use 3 times the energy per
  unit area as the buildings in the LA facility.

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The completion of the facility has made news
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Why Does This Matter?

• Reason 1
• MSU spends 700,000 per MONTH on
• its utility bill. Thats over 8M per year.
• If we could trim that bill by 2/3, we would save
  over 5M each year.

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Why Does This Matter?
Reason 2 Homeland Security Sustainable
buildings are less dependent upon centralized
sources of energy. A public building that has
minimal HVAC and artificial lighting needs is
more likely to maintain function if centralized
energy is disrupted.
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Why Does This Matter?
Reason 3 Sustainability Sustainability
Meeting our needs in ways that allow our children
and grandchildren to meet their needs.
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Sustainability

• Leaving our children a world that is less
• inhabitable than the one we were born
• into is wrong.
• Our descendents have a right to
• sufficient resources to meet their
• needs.
• They have a right to live in a world that
• has not been significantly degraded.

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We didnt use to have to worry about
sustainability? What has changed?
Projected 9-12 billion by 2050
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There are enough of us now to adversely effect
the natural systems upon which we depend.

• 7000 sq. mile dead (anoxic) zone in
• the northern Gulf of Mexico.
• World wide loss of biodiversity.
• Global warming.

What is the carrying capacity of earth?
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No one knows for sure. But
like a giraffe growing up in a garage,
we will eventually have to consider our limits
and our options.
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So how does a low energy demand building make us
more sustainable?

• Decreased demand on non-renewable resources.

• Decreased pollutant production.

• Decreased demand on electrical grid.

• Decreased production of greenhouse gases (CO2)
• Energy use at an electric power plant is 3 xs
  use at the site.
• The LA facility produces 600 Mtons less CO2 per
  year than a conventionally designed building of
  the same size..

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How did the LA facility happen?
Pete Melby I have been working together for
years.
Eventually we wrote a book.
And the building came out of the book!
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Is building sustainably as hard as brain surgery?
Before air conditioners and central heat,
buildings used passive cooling and heating, and
it worked!
Passive means that it does not require additional
energy.
and there were many techniques that were used.
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Heat comes from the sun. In the summer, we want
to keep it out.
Use overhangs that prevent solar radiation from
striking the sides of the buildings.
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But we know that the elevation of the winter sun
at noon is a lot lower than the summer sun at
noon .
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Design the overhangs so that direct sunlight does
strike the walls (and particularly the windows)
in winter.
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The winter sunlight will pass through the window.
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Then build your floor out of a material that
absorbs and can hold a lot of heat. It will heat
during the day and
Passive Solar Heating
give the heat back at night.
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Make the walls thick with stone or brick. The
interior temperature will change very little.
Thats why caves were such popular dwellings for
ancient peoples.
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Use high ceilings to keep rooms cool (a good
technique for the south, where cooling exceeds
heating energy use).
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Open windows to enhance natural
ventilation.(duhhh)
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Not all the technologies are old.
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Windows are light years ahead of where they used
to be.
They were once unstoppable heat leaks.
Multi-paned windows using an assortment of
coatings and inert gases now have high insulation
values.
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There are many new insulating materials and
places to use them.
Shown here is foundation insulation.
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Asphalt shingles are the norm for roofing in many
places.
In the South, they can reach 160 F !
Heat gain through the roof can be more than half
of your cooling load.
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Reflective roofs are much better in the South.
The best and most recently introduced are both
reflective and have a high capacity to radiate
the heat back into space.
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Some of the new technologies are expensive!
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Geothermal (earth linked) Heat Pump.
The system used in the LA Facility added 350k to
the price of the 4M building. But payback time
is 10 years (much less than expected life).
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Photovoltaic system
This system was paid for by the Tennessee Valley
Authority (part of their green power
project). Payback time is 20 years (about the
same as expected life).
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MSU has a state of the art example of green
architecture.
Its a product of many technologies, some old and
some new. Its also a product of human thought.
Thats probably the most important ingredient.
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We have lived by the assumption that what was
good for us would be good for the world. We
have been wrong. We must change our lives, so
that it will be possible to live by the contrary
assumption, that what is good for the world will
be good for us. And that requires that we make
the effort to know the world and learn what is
good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its
processes, and to yield to its limits.
Wendell Berry (Recollected Essays)