Integral Stormwater Design Part 2: Gwinnett County Environmental and Heritage Center

The 59,000sf Gwinnett County Environmental and Heritage Center designed by Lord, Aeck & Sargent is a LEED Gold Certified building. Its main purpose is to inspire visitors to become better stewards of the environment. As a part of this mission, it has incorporated various stormwater management strategies within the design. The Jaeger Company was the landscape architect. The main focus of the site plan is a large cascading water feature that functions as a heat exchanger for the building. The clean, but non-potable water that supplies it comes from a nearby water treatment facility. The water is then used for irrigation, flushing toilets, and the heating and cooling system. The stormwater management strategy used in the parking lot is similar to the Alpharetta High School parking lot, though the GCEHC's lot is a bit more elaborate particularly because it utilizes pervious pavers within the parking bays and secures the parking edges with flush curbs. One of my favorite details is the design of the rain chains located all around the building. Another important stormwater management feature is the extensive green roof. According to the their website, it is the largest sloping green roof in the United States. The total cost of the project was $16.6 million. You can find more photos of this project on our parent site sitephocus.com.

Integral Stormwater Design Part 1: Alpharetta High School

The Alpharetta High School (333,000sf, $47.4 million), located in Alpharetta, Georgia, was designed by Perkins+Will. Poole Design provided landscape architectural services. The design for the facility was selected through a juried design competition. The project includes a number of sustainable stormwater strategies that are incorporated into the overall design of the project.

When first approaching Alpharetta High School, you immediately realize that it had to contend with a very challenging site. Located at the foothills of the North Georgia mountains 150ft above the Big Creek Basin, the building was sited to minimize its impact on the site while maintaining one its greatest assets, the view of the surrounding landscape. As with most suburban high schools, it had to accommodate a large number of surface parking spaces for the faculty, staff, and many of its 1,850 students. The parking lot is divided into a series of 60ft parking bays that terrace down the hillside.It utilizes wheel stops and eliminates curbs on the low side of the parking. This arrangement conveys the stormwater into bioretention facilities separating each parking bay which encourages water to infiltrate into the soil. Each one is planted with shrubs and the steep slopes are planted with large shade trees.

Other stormwater facilities include the large bioretention basins between each wing of the high school. The basins are fed by roof water directed to the basin with conventional rain leaders and large concrete runnels. Together they create an attractive stormwater feature. My favorite feature was the stormwater runnels that cascaded along the steps, eventually terminating into a large bioretention basin. You can find more photos of this project on our parent site sitephocus.com.

Economic Outlook for Non-Residential Construction

AIA released their Architectural Billing Index (ABI) from February last week. It did not paint an optimistic view of the months to come. The release came as I was writing about AIA’s Construction Forecast for 2008 and ASLA’s Market Survey. AIA’s CF projects a relatively flat year in non-residential construction while ASLA’s MS is more optimistic. At the time they were done, they obviously did not have the benefit of knowing the future. Each provides a differing outlook, with AIA’s being more on target. The release of the AIA’s ABI was a surprise to many as it was significantly lower than most expected. AIA’s press release indicates studies that say it is a good predictor of construction activity over a 9 to 12 month period. It is down nearly 25% from December’s numbers.

I always hate to be pessimistic, but the fundamentals of the economy have been out of whack for some time and are beginning to correct themselves. With the continued credit crunch and the problems in the financing sector, money is not as easy to come by. In addition, inflation, higher energy cost, devalued dollar, and the loss of value in people’s largest asset, their home, one is to expect to see a downturn in consumer spending. With that will come a continued cutback in retail, office, and industrial expansion. The refunds coming this year from Washington won’t offer much relief from these issues. This cycle will take time and I wouldn’t be surprised if this last beyond 2010.

AIA’s Construction Forecast predicts the state of non-residential construction will only get worse in 2009 and predicts a drop of growth (-0.9%). AIA’s Construction Forecast is comprised of various organizations that make their own forecast and on AIA’s website, you can isolate each member’s projection. The most optimistic is Reed Construction Data who sees an increase of 8% in 2008 and 4.9% in 2009. McGraw-Hill Construction is most pessimistic projecting -4.6% in 2008 and -2% in 2009, though Global Insight suggests a worse 2009 at -5.4%. These are the averages combining each industry followed. The bright spots include institutional, education, and health care. As would be expected retail is projected to fair the worst.

Despite the bad news, it is important to keep in mind the population will continue to grow and while the demand for future facilities may not be at its incredible pace of the last few years, there will still be demand. Investment will still continue. There just may be less of it.

Trying to make sense of ASLA’s optimism when it comes to landscape architecture, maybe the discrepancy in the outlooks has more to do with the fact that there are fewer landscape architects than architects and the increased move in the marketplace toward sustainable building practices may favor landscape architects. This trend has resulted in greater collaboration between architects and landscape architects. Architectural Record recently wrote a piece on discussing this trend with an example illustrating the collaboration between SWA and Renzo Piano on the California Academy of Sciences.

"As the environmental details of sites become more integrated into architectural design, be it to store water or to absorb the impact of a large building, landscape design is becoming a major part of the architecture. And as green roofs are growing up in our own backyards, the relationship between architect and landscape architect is sure to blossom."

While I whole heartily believe in the benefits landscape architects bring to a design team, I caution this optimism as architects seek to protect their practices from the economic downturn. You could see more architects keeping their services in-house as opposed to bringing a landscape architect onto the team. I hope this does not happen because our built environment would suffer, but it is not out of the realm of possibilities.

Creative Use of Solar and Wind in the Landscape

A recent post at Interactive Architecture about a street light at the Tokyo Panasonic Center that combines solar and wind was impressive. While not the most beautiful light, it was interesting to see the potential of combining these technologies, though the surveillance technology allowing you to capture photos of your child with an RFID tag while on their way to school is a bit creepy. Here is a video of the light in action on the referenced blog Hyperexperience.

Over the coming years, I hope to see more solar and wind products being integrated in the design of public spaces. So far when I have tried, their high cost has been the major stumbling block and hopefully over time this hurdle can be overcome. Besides offering renewable energy, they can provide a dynamic iconic design element that projects a clear message of sustainability. Wind turbines in particular have become very sculptural and I particularly like the helical form factor. Some that I have run across include the QR5 from Quiet Revolution (See video) and the Wind Wandler by the German company called MatroW. I doubt we will see many of these because of their steep cost. The QR5 runs over $50,000 a piece and the Wind Wandler is around $12,000, but are beautiful none the less. A relatively inexpensive conventional horizontal axis wind turbine is the SkyStream 3.7 by Southwest Windpower. According to their brochure they can cost up to $9,000 for installation. I am not sure about the Skystream but I have been around some smaller turbines and they can be very loud at high speeds, an important factor that needs to be considered when siting them in active spaces where users will be in close proximity.

I do wonder how much designers need to worry about people hurting themselves? Would vandals try to throw objects into them? Maybe someone might get their kite sucked into one? Despite these issues, I hope to see more in the landscape.