Architecture Goes Green

The stately brick and terra-cotta building with vaulting four-story window arches represents a quintessentially New York City phenomenon: the architectural landmark that nobody notices. Built in the 1890s on a fashionable corner in Greenwich Village, it was designed for a long-forgotten retailer who dreamed of giving Macy's a run for its money. Passersby would probably not be surprised if the structure disappeared overnight to be replaced with a modern apartment tower. They would never guess that this venerable edifice is the most energy-efficient building in Manhattan.

Yet the headquarters of the National Audubon Society is that and more. Extensively refurbished last year, the airy, daylight-filled office space not only uses 61% less energy and 68% less electricity than it did before the renovation -- saving an estimated $100,000 a year, but it also recycles 80% of all office waste, including 42 tons of paper annually; cools its air without ozone-depleting CFCs; and employs environmentally benign and recycled construction materials throughout -- not to mention the 300 tons of steel, 9,000 tons of masonry and 560 tons of concrete that Audubon preserved by reusing the original structure.

Innovative as it is, the Audubon building might be written off as an impractical exercise in spare-no-expense radical environmentalism, except for one thing: the society demanded that every design decision had to satisfy the kind of bottom-line scrutiny a tightwad CEO would apply. Though it cost up to 10% more to build green than to build conventionally, Audubon president Peter Berle insisted that every environmental measure taken in the $14 million project had to justify its cost within a five-year period. Says Berle: "It was an opportunity to build a structure that would both save Audubon money and provide a model for others to replicate."

The project's success is a testament to the fact that green architecture has begun to come of age, after a false and unaesthetic start in the early 1970s. Architects, builders, construction managers and corporate planners are beginning to realize that environmentally sound buildings are not only politically correct, they are cheaper to operate and offer a healthier environment for workers. These pragmatic advantages are being demonstrated by such structures as the Natural Resources Defense Council headquarters in New York City, the Environmental Defense Fund building in Washington, the Internationale Nederlanden Group Bank in Amsterdam and a regional government center now under construction in Marseilles.

Even the famously middlebrow Wal-Mart chain is getting in on the act. The retailer is designing an "environmental store" in Lawrence, Kansas, that could become the prototype for all future Wal-Marts and for retrofitting the chain's existing stores. The retail outlet will be built mostly of wood and concrete block -- materials that require 33% less energy to produce than steel -- and feature an elaborate, high-efficiency lighting system enhanced by skylights that use holographic films to spread daylight evenly over the space. The store will have its own recycling center so that shipping boxes never have to leave the site. And for the ultimate in recycling, the entire structure is designed to be converted easily to housing in the event that Wal-Mart vacates.

The motivation for going green is sometimes idealistic, sometimes materialistic and usually a little of both. There is no question that traditional office structures are environmentally wasteful and destructive. In the U.S., such buildings account for one-third of the nation's peak electricity consumption: they are costly to operate and will become even more so when new energy taxes go into effect. Furthermore, nearly one-quarter of all ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons are emitted by office air conditioners and the manufacturing processes used to make building materials. Of more immediate concern to workers is the miserable quality of the air they breathe: because of their design and the synthetic materials they employ, between one- third and one-half of all commercial buildings are filled with polluted air, in some cases 100 times as polluted as air on the other side of the windows. Such "sick buildings" wreak havoc with workers' health and productivity.

As awareness of such problems grows, so does the movement to go green. Among the converts is Susan Maxman, the first woman to preside over the American Institute of Architects and the first AIA president to give top priority to environmental concerns. In June, a joint conference of the AIA and the World Congress of Architects will be devoted to "Designing for a Sustainable Future." Says Maxman: "We hope to truly change how people view the way they design, looking at everything they do in terms of what it means for future generations."

In practice, this calls for a careful evaluation of every component that goes into a building, including lighting, heating, ventilation, carpeting, wall covering, paint, waste disposal and even the structure itself -- and then figuring out how each element interacts with the others. For example, observes Berle, "if you've got a more efficient building shell and more efficient lighting system, that obviously has an impact on what you need in terms of heating and cooling." His new headquarters proves the point. It carries a little more than half the air conditioning capacity engineers would ordinarily specify for a building of its size -- and still has plenty of reserve capacity.

Or take lighting. The building employs the latest in efficient technology, including tiny sensors that adjust office illumination depending on whether or not people are actually using the room and how much light is streaming in through the windows. But beyond that, "Everything we did took lighting into account," says architect Randy Croxton, who also designed the National Resources Defense Council building. "The height of work stations, the color of paint on the walls, the orientation of windows and corridors -- all were designed to optimize lighting strategy." Moreover, the lighting isn't homogeneous, the way it is in most offices. "It's varied according to when and where it is needed and also varied to create effects, natural shadows and / silhouettes." Such subtleties humanize the workplace, says Croxton. "The ability to have a sense of season, weather, time of day, to be able to orient yourself with the changing light of the day is such a basic need. It affects performance, productivity, calmness."

Another key part of Audubon's plan was to look at construction materials in terms of their entire life cycles. Where did the raw materials come from and how were they mined, extracted or harvested? How much waste was created and how much energy required to manufacture the finished product? What will happen to the product when it is disassembled? How safe is it for the workers in the building and how safe for the planet?

The result: paint without carcinogenic volatile organic compounds; carpeting that is dye-free, glue-free and 100% wool, with padding made from jute and animal hair; subfloors made from Homasote, a recycled-newspaper product, instead of formaldehyde-laden plywood; floor tiles fabricated from crushed light bulbs; a CFC-free insulation made from common minerals; and a reception desk built of maple and of mahogany that was harvested in a manner that does not destroy rain forests.

Audubon's chief scientist, Jan Beyea, was in on all these decisions. Even so, he was stunned by one result of the effort: an odorless building. "A month before we moved in, I'm walking around, and they are painting the walls and laying down the rugs and I can't smell anything," Beyea recalls. "That shows we did our job." Beyea attributes the facility's overall success to "a hundred, maybe several hundred, different little things, each of which by itself is rather insignificant."

Choosing the best materials for green buildings remains a challenge. Croxton has researched hundreds of products, but even when appropriate materials can be located, they are often too expensive or too hard to get delivered on schedule or too heavy for a building's structure. But that too is beginning to change under pressure from architects and their clients. Manufacturers have begun to gear up their environmentally sensitive product lines, and several independent groups have compiled lists of green materials. The Rainforest Alliance, for example, has researched the tropical hardwood trade (estimated at $7 billion a year) and come up with a list of woods, like rubberwood, grown on Malaysian plantations, whose harvest does little damage to the rain forest.

Locating the right materials has become easier too. The AIA now publishes an Environmental Resource Guide. And architect Paul Bierman-Lytle, a specialist in building environmentally sensitive homes, has put together an alternative building-products catalog that lists more than 2,600 materials and technologies. More recently he helped establish an eco-mall for environmental construction materials. First begun in 1981 as a mail-order business, Environmental Construction Outfitters now has a 5,000-sq.-ft. loft in New York City that showcases everything from natural carpeting and cork flooring to solar energy, cotton insulation and environmental paints. The emporium also runs workshops on how to use such materials.

Schools of architecture are also awakening to the green gospel. Says Marvin Rosenman, chairman of the architecture department at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana: "I think it's a very, very exciting time to study architecture. Young architects are concerned about these issues, and the curriculum will have to expand. We'll need to offer courses in chemistry and the natural sciences so that architects can play a more important role in the built environment."

William McDonough, consulting architect for the Wal-Mart project and one of the most visionary of the green designers, thinks environmental consciousness is not merely a new constraint on his profession, but has the potential to create a new aesthetic. It was the unfortunate coincidence of cheap oil and the ability to fabricate large sheets of glass, he argues, that led to the "modern" office buildings pioneered by architects like Mies van der Rohe in the 1950s. Architectural movements since then -- notably postmodernism -- have been purely superficial, decorative responses to that style. "That's why this movement is so exciting," says McDonough. "What is it made out of? How is it made? We're not talking about just another glib exercise in artifice. We're talking about a fundamentally new principle of design."