Sustainability

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 In 2004, Master Sgt. Mark Rizzo’s U.S. Army convoy was traveling north on a route in Baghdad, Iraq. 

 Vermont Mutual Insurance Group was on a mission when searching for a new space to be constructed for its Claims Division department.  

At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an Army and Air Force base located about one hour south of Seattle, there is a 35,000-square-foot maintenance facility with training and administration areas that deserves some notice. 

After a rainy winter in 2009, and after waiting for the site to dry, construction finally got underway on the Upper Cumberland Regional Health Facility (UCRHF) in Cookeville, Tenn. Owned by the State of Tennessee, the new construction of this 50,000-square-foot facility building was essential for compensating for the recent and expected growth of the regional health department.

 In 2008, the Boston Harbor Island Alliance and National Park Service held a competition for a visitor information pavilion for the Boston Harbor Islands, a national park composed of 38 islands that are accessible by ferryboat from the Boston waterfront.  

 As new rules are introduced, a learning curve is sometimes associated with them, and creative solutions are required to avoid problems down the road. 

As covered by EDC in the May 2011 article “Opening Windows to Cutting-Edge Education,” the Center for Energy Efficient Design (CEED) opened its doors in November 2010, as the first public school in the U.S. built according to Passive House (or Passivhaus) standards, arguably the world’s highest standards in energy-efficient construction. 

 For today’s architect, sustainability has become a core professional value, as fundamental an indicator of project success as commodity, firmness and delight.  

Solar panels and cool roofs are a natural integration of sustainable technologies that can increase the output of a photovoltaic system by as much as 10 percent.