greenbuildingsNYC

Hitting the Wall: Upper East Side Yoga Studio's Green Wall Losing Battle With Scaffolding

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:02:11 +0000

What's not to like about a living wall? Where regular walls are (perhaps inevitably) drab and wall-like, a living wall is leafy and generally green-colored and alive. I barely remember what it was like to walk past The Colorado -- a condo building on the Upper East Side a couple blocks from my apartment -- before Pure Yoga moved into the space formerly known as The Space Behind The Gap back in 2008. But I remember vividly the experience of walking past the leafy, verdant facade provided by the living wall Pure Yoga installed. It was like a big vertical salad at first, and then was wild and blowy and lush during the summer months, and things like that stick in the memory. Sadly, though, that memory is about all that's left of the living wall at this point. Thanks to the inevitable Manhattan intrusion of a scaffolding bridge, Pure Yoga's living wall is looking kind of... well, dead.

At The Real Deal, James Gardner discusses the sad fate of Pure Yoga's living wall, and the bigger problems of trying to keep green walls green in Manhattan. In general, living walls are a challenge in terms of irrigation, sunlight and a number of other variables, and while some green walls work better than others -- the Nzinga Townhomes in Bedford-Stuyvesant use an innovative graywater-irrigation system to keep their green walls green -- Gardner argues that Pure Yoga's wall never really had a chance. "The scaffolding went up about a year ago and, as always, it sliced sheer across the second story of the building, entombing the living wall in constant darkness, notwithstanding its precious southern exposure," Gardner writes. "For some time, the owners of Pure Yoga held tight, continuing to water the plants through a complicated and costly tangle of pipes built into the wall. But eventually it became clear that they were fighting a losing battle, and there appears to be no end in sight for the removal of the scaffolding."

While the ghost of the former green wall -- which was designed by architect James Harb and implemented by landscapers Tony Caggiano and Melissa Daniels -- is still there. Kind of. I saw it just this morning, actually, looking brave and bristly and brown and rained-on and pretty freaking sad, honestly. The good news -- at least according to my wife, who takes classes there -- is that Pure Yoga remains a pretty nice place to take yoga classes. Sadly, it just happens to be in a city that's not so nice a place to have a living wall. So let's let the picture above -- and this photo-rich 2008 post from Buildinggreentv -- remind us of the green wall's (vertical) salad days.

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Nice One, Misha: Baryshnikov Arts Center at 37 Arts Earns LEED Honors for New Jerome Robbins Theater

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:26:49 +0000

If you've hung around with artists recently -- or at all -- then you've heard someone say, "this is a tough time for the arts." And while it's pretty much always a tough time for the arts -- that's why they're the arts and not, say, arbitrage -- this is New York, which means that there's still plenty of great places to see performances. One of the better-known and generally one of the better of these is the Baryshnikov Arts Center, housed in the John W. Averitt-designed 37 ARTS building in Chelsea. Having living dance legend Mikhail Baryshnikov as part of the brand obviously helps, but BAC also presents very good, very ambitious work. With the news that the BAC's new Jerome Robbins Theater has received unspecified LEED certification, that ambition has crossed over from something my wife (a dancer who works at another awesome modern dance presenter) cares a lot about to something I care a lot about. Just like that, we have something to talk about at dinner. Thanks, Misha!

And yet there's more to this story than a dinner at my apartment filled with bon mots and delightful conversation -- which is kind of our dinner every night, if you count chewing and serious conversations about Top Chef as bon mots. The BAC's re-imagining of the 299-square-foot proscenium-style theater as the ultra-modern new Jerome Robbins Theater is scheduled to wrap up in February 2010, and should provide a venue that's both intriguing and ambitious enough to match the BAC's impressive dance and theater programming and the work of soon-to-be company-in-residence the Wooster Group. (That's a compliment, the Wooster Group is dope)

The Baryshnikov Arts Center occupies the top three floors of 37 ARTS, with the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, a new resource and rehearsal center for the chamber ensemble Orchestra of St. Luke's, occupying the lower three levels. Much of the renovation work on the Jerome Robbins Theater was done with theater-type things in mind -- improved sightlines, installing state-of-the-art lighting and rigging systems, that sort of stuff -- but a commitment to using recycled content and local/sustainable construction materials earned the project the LEED nod from USGBC. We'll have more on this project in weeks to come, I'm sure. We'll see what I can learn at dinner.

Check out the BAC's very cool slideshow of the renovation here.

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Stubbed Out: Related Companies to Ban Smokers From Six Residential Buildings, Including LEED Gold Tribeca Green

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:50:35 +0000

New York's smokers lobby is nowhere near as powerful as, say, the over-the-counter derivatives lobby or bluefin tuna fishery-collapsing industry or whatever, and the city's six-year old ban on smoking in bars and restaurants reflects as much. While we non-smokers who go to bars and restaurants (and concerts and anyplace else, honestly) appreciate the ban, it's hard not to feel bad for smokers sometimes, seeing them all huddled and hunted-looking like Walker Evans photos come to wheezing life, bent around their cigarettes on some January sidewalk. Other times, like for instance when you're actually in a bar or restaurant (or concert or anyplace else) it's kind of a relief. But with the news that Related Companies is planning to ban smokers from their rental properties -- which includes the LEED Gold Tribeca Green -- the issue is back in the spotlight.

Specifics are still sketchy about Related's planned ban -- which C.J. Hughes first reported in Sunday's New York Times -- although Tribeca Green is almost certainly one of the six downtown residential buildings in which the order will be put into effect. "Ban" also may not be the right word for Related's plan, exactly. "Smokers who already live in any of these buildings will not be affected," Hughes writes. "But any new renters must promise not to smoke at home, even if they continue to elsewhere." Related isn't the first entity in New York real estate to do this -- Kenbar Management's 1510 Lexington Avenue development was planned as Manhattan's first non-smoking apartment building, and Pan Am Equities instituted a similar ban at its rental properties back in 2008. But the presence of a LEED building in the mix highlighted something that I didn't know (Stephen probably did, but he's on his honeymoon) about LEED indoor environemnt standards -- buildings that bar smokers will receive no LEED points for having done so. LEED's preference for ventilation systems and dedicated smoking rooms has drawn criticism from some quarters.

Of course, smoking is not a green (or, like, good) habit in any number of ways, and second-hand smoke is a lotmore direct a way to introduce carcinogens to a building than, say, non-green finishes or carpeting. A recent study estimated that 38,000 Americans die each year from complications related to second-hand smoke, with New Yorkers more likely to be exposed to second-hand smoke due to the generalized density of NYC's living conditions. Considering the lengths to which some green buildings go to improve indoor air quality -- and considering how important indoor air quality actually is -- it's hard to argue that this ban doesn't make some sense. More stringent LEED standards on smoking, of course, are a matter for the USGBC to decide. Once again, it's hard not to feel for our cigarette-smoking friends, who will now find themselves shuffling out of their homes to smoke, but hopefully this will emerge as another reason -- besides cigarettes being implausibly bad for you -- for them to quit.

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Jersey Continues to Go Green: Good News on Two New Green Residential Developments in Garden State

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:31:48 +0000

We're pretty up front with our pro-Jersey bias here at gbNYC. Stephen and I are both sons of that superfund-y soil, after all, and after several decades of environment-intensive Jersey jokes -- medical waste washes up on your beaches one time and you hear about it forever -- it's kind of empowering to be able to report good green news about the Garden State. And we've had a good amount of it to report of late -- green condos in Trenton, an ultra-sustainable retail building in Montclair, and now, good news about a pair of green housing developments in Morris County and Union County. The Point at Morristown, Jersey's first Green Globes-certified building and the subject of a previous post by Stephen, is now at 90% occupancy, while Scotch Plains' Park Avenue Green was awarded EPA Energy Star honors. This doesn't solve the vexing and ongoing moral and athletic problem that is the New Jersey Nets, but it's good news nonetheless.

Stephen's previous post on the The Point at Morristown has all the information you need on the building's green elements, but they're considerable. More notable, though, is the fact that The Point at Morristown pursued Green Globes certification rather than LEED. Back in 2008, New Jersey became the 12th state to write green building legislation that recognizes both Green Globes standards and LEED standards, which Stephen (and I, now that I know about it) recognize as unequivocally good news. As Stephen wrote when S1077, the Jersey initiative, was first being discussed, "gbNYC has frequently called for rating system flexibility among state- and municipal-level legislative schemes." LEED has its uses and it also has its faults, but healthy competition between ratings systems -- and an opened-up playing field -- seems like an inarguably positive development. As, it should be said, is the news that The Point at Morristown is pretty well full during a down market.

The bad news about 549 Park Avenue, which was built by New Jersey green building aces NeedlePoint Homes, is that it doesn't have its own website. (There is a NeedlePoint press release online, though) The good news on 549 Park Avenue, though, is manifest -- it's sustainable as can be, top to bottom, and one of the greenest suburban residential developments in the Garden State. Double-insulated windows, copious insulation and Energy Star hot water heaters are standard in each apartment, while the building systems include high-efficiency HVAC set-ups, integrated-solar attic fans and a battery of Energy Star appliances. The parking lot features permeable pavers, and is within walking distance of mass transit. In other words, it's urban-caliber green in a suburban setting. It is also, per that press release, "the first certified New Jersey Energy Star apartment building in western Union County." Which... is good, I guess? That title is an achievement, naturally, but not nearly as impressive an achievement as the building itself.

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Let's Take This Outside: Sustainable Sites Initiative Unveils "LEED for Landscape" Ratings

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:40:26 +0000

At the most basic level -- in the way that the sky is blue and Jon Gosselin's fake-tanned skin is orange -- grass and trees and topiary and your other things-that-grow are green. It's tough to explain why all this is, so many years after seventh grade science, but chlorophyll and photosynthesis are involved and long story short plants are good for the earth and appealing looking besides. But while planting a tree is unquestionably a good thing -- PlaNYC, at least, thinks so -- there's more to a sustainable and healthy landscape than meets the eye. While it might all looks green to most of us, the new guidelines and planned rating system for green landscape development being offered by the Sustainable Sites Initiative makes it possible to get a more nuanced look at how green a specific project is.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative is the result of a collaboration between the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the United States Botanic Garden with the stated goal of creating, "voluntary national guidelines and performance benchmarks for sustainable land design, construction and maintenance practices." It's LEED for Landscapes, if you prefer. While it's obviously not an easy task ascertaining just how sustainable a given outdoor space is -- ecosystems just do so incredibly many different things, from absorbing stormwater to storing carbon, that it's tough to just take everything in and go "A-plus, kudos!" -- it's pretty easy to tell when an ecosystem isn't working, and notably more expensive to attempt to rejuvenate a compromised ecosystem than it is to preserve it in the first place. With all that in mind, the Sustainable Sites Initiative has launched a pilot program that will attempt to certify and rate as many projects of 2,000 or more square feet as register before the February 2010 deadline; a number of sites, such as the Queens Botanical Garden's Visitor and Administration Center (pictured above, and the subject of copious coverage at gbNYC), have already been the subject of SSI case studies. The goal is to make adjustments according to the results of the pilot project, allow one final public comment period, and then try to issue final standards by 2013. If you want to register a project for the SSI pilot project, go here and knock yourself out; if you'd like to read the entire 233-page guideline and benchmark document, click here.

"Any open land with a designed project -- from parking lots to backyards to corporate campuses -- will be eligible for certification under the new standards," E&E News' Noelle Straub writes. "The rating system works on a 250-point scale and awards one through four stars. The guidelines focus on site selection, conservation of water, use of native vegetation and recycled materials, inclusion of elements for the public's use, construction processes and long-term maintenance." Also, in a nice upgrade over the oft-criticized LEED paradigm, the Sustainable Sites Initiative is, Environmental Leader reports, "applicable not only after construction and landscaping have been completed, but is designed to provide a continuous cycle of assessment and evaluation."

So let's tote things up on the Sustainable Cities Initiative: it's dynamic in its application, diverse in its targets, and offers a new way of looking at something many of us see all the time but don't really know how to look at. Sounds good, right? It's hard to know what, if anything, the Sustainable Sites Initiative's impact will be on the world -- or our own urban ecosystem here in NYC -- until after the pilot program is closed, but we're going to keep an eye on the Sustainable Cities Initiative and any New York projects that enroll in the pilot program. As ever, you can help us out a lot in this, either by emailing me or Stephen or dropping a note in the comments about an SSI-registered site near you.

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gbNYC Internal Affairs: Excuse Us While We Attend These Nups

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:37:06 +0000

Not to put Stephen's business all out in the street or anything, but... let me put Stephen's business out in the street for a minute. He's down in Virginia right now, writing out place cards and double-checking catering and generally doing the things that people who are a day or so away from getting married do. This is because he's getting married this weekend. I know, right? They grow up so fast!

As SDP and I have been friends since we were very small -- we used to discuss photovoltaics and green roofs during kickball games at Ridgewood, New Jersey's Ira W. Travell Elementary -- I'll be attending this wedding, as well. While my role in the proceedings is not nearly as important as Stephen's -- people can generally find their seats without some ironical tuxedo'd guy's mumbled help -- it is demanding enough, time-wise, that neither he nor I will be doing much posting on gbNYC for a little bit. Regularly scheduled programming -- that is, posts by me; Stephen's going to be on his honeymoon -- will resume early next week.

While this isn't the time to wax grandiose about the dude, the actual time to wax grandiose about him would be a drunken toast of some sort, and I'm not going to make one of those. So I'll just say that it has been a pleasure working for him over these last couple months as we re-shape and grow gbNYC, and an even greater pleasure knowing him for the decades that I have. He's a wonderful friend and a very smart dude, and his wife -- if you were wondering, and even if you weren't -- is every bit his match. They're both moderate-to-small sized human beings with huge hearts and brains and I'm proud to know them both. Oh man, I told myself I wouldn't cry. See you Monday or Tuesday.

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gbNYC Book Club: David Owen's "Green Metropolis" Singles Out NYC as Standard-Setter

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:36:31 +0000

Plenty of New Yorkers found reasons to vote against Michael Bloomberg yesterday, although roughly five percent more found a reason to vote for him, and he was elected for his third term as Mayor. (You may have heard as much if you use sites other than gbNYC for your local politics news, which you probably should) Whether they made that decision despite or because of the Bloomberg campaign's $85 million mini-stimulus to the negative-advertising and direct-mail industries is a decision each voter made for him- or herself, but one achievement on which Bloomberg can easily hang his (very expensive) hat is the impressive greening of New York City. I'm not always the hugest fan of Bloomie -- Stephen likes him more than I do, I think -- but His Orange, Philanthropically Inclined Honor has delivered to an impressive degree on his goal of making New York City a surpassingly green city for its size. "Green Metropolis," a (relatively) new book by The New Yorker's David Owen, argues that Bloomberg's New York is not just one of the greenest cities in the United States, but in the entire world.

Of course, this isn't exactly news to New Yorkers who care about this sort of thing -- the news that New Yorkers' per capita carbon footprint is less than a third of the 24.5-metric-ton American national average has long been a point of pride for those of us who bother being proud of that sort of thing. Owen's greater point -- as summarized in Margaret Mittelbach's review of "Green Metropolis" in the San Francisco Chronicle -- is that the secret of New York's efficiency lies less in New Yorkers than in New York itself. "The lesson to be learned from New York City, [Owen] says, is not that New Yorkers are particularly environmentally aware, compared with anyone else," Mittelbach writes. "It's that their population-dense living situation makes it easier and cheaper to use less energy."

Or, as Owen himself put it in The New Yorker five years ago (gbNYC is breaking news!), "To borrow a term from the jargon of computer systems, dense cities are scalable, while sprawling suburbs are not. The environmental challenge we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world's non-renewable resources, is not how to make our teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The true challenge is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan." Owen updated that piece recently on his website, and also made this point in greater detail, and more recently, at Yale's Environment 360 website.

In the Yale piece, Owen makes the point that while New York's efficiency is easy to disparage as "unconscious" -- that is, we don't really have much choice but to live in smallish apartments, get to work on the subway, etc. -- it's that very inevitability that made New York comparatively efficient on a per-capita basis even before programs such as Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 made the quest for a greener, more sustainable city something that people actually thought about. This is kind of a new thing for gbNYC, but I'm going to buy "Green Metropolis" and give it a read, and hope you'll do the same -- I'll post my thoughts on it once I read it. If you've already read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. I trust there won't be any serious spoilers; this isn't "Mad Men," here, which means I imagine it won't get revealed that NYC is secretly cheating on Betty with the (pretty but honestly kind of boring) schoolteacher. If that happens in the book, please keep it to yourself.

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Grey Global Moves Into LEED-CS-Hopeful Toy Building at 200 Fifth Avenue

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:04:05 +0000

Out of the top 50 commercial office leases that were signed in Manhattan back in 2007, the 6th largest was secured by advertising and marketing firm Grey Global Group for a new 370,000-square-foot headquarters at L&L Holding Company's 200 Fifth Avenue. (You may recall that for both calendar years 2007 and 2008, we identified commercial leases that were secured in green buildings, LEED-certified or otherwise, from CoStar's list of the 50 largest deals of the year here in New York City). Last week, Grey actually moved into its new space at 200 Fifth Avenue, where L&L continues to seek formal LEED for Core and Shell certification from USGBC in connection with its $100 million renovation effort of the 100-year old, 15-story tower, which was formerly known as the International Toy Center and designed by Maynicke & Franke.

Green design features include an efficient glass curtain wall and HVAC system, a 6000-square-foot bamboo-filled courtyard garden, and a green roof. The terra cotta tower also features hanging gardens that extend from its original setbacks and are maintained with a graywater system. Extensive natural daylight penetrates the Toy Building's interiors, while common areas are illuminated with an LED lighting grid. Grey's lease across the 2nd through 6th floors is for a term of 15 years.

On another note, as some of you know, I will be getting married later this week. While I've been preparing for the wedding, our new Senior Editor, David Roth, has been doing most of the work around here, and I'd like to thank him for his efforts. David is a great addition to the gbNYC team and we're thrilled to have him on board, especially during the past few weeks while I've been under water. I'll be back with you full-time after Thanksgiving; in the interim, please send tips and items of interest to David at david@gbnyc.com.

Top Green Office Leases in Manhattan by Square Footage: 2007 (gbNYC)
Grey New York Moves (PR)

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Put It On the Books: Syracuse's Marcellus Free Library Earns LEED Silver Honors

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:34:14 +0000

Syracuse and Buffalo, by reputation, are the de facto buckles on New York's rust belt. But while those two Western New York cities have shrunken mightily over the past few decades and almost never get any sun, there remain more green bright spots in both than their rusty-brown reputations would suggest. Buffalo, as we've discussed here in the past, is home to several interesting green buildings and seems to be emerging as a green-energy center; Syracuse has a surprisingly long history of sustainability and the university is doing a lot of research into <strike>replacing point guard Jonny Flynn</strike> new and more efficient building systems. What Syracuse didn't have, besides a reputation that matches its sustainability, was a LEED-certified building. That has now changed, thanks to the LEED Silver honors bestowed on Syracuse's Marcellus Free Library. It's the first LEED-certified building in the city, and in all of Onondaga County.

It's also a pretty impressive building in its own right, and a real achievement for Marcellus-based Lake Architectural. While it's not an architectural marvel -- it's a smallish-town public library, you were expecting Bilbao? -- it does include a suite of green design elements that range far into the unexpected. The emphasis on insulation, low-toxicity finishes and furniture and natural light are fairly par for the course; the geothermal heating and cooling and 16,200-watt solar array notably less so. Sunlight isn't necessarily easy to come by in Syracuse -- the city had just 164 sunny days in 2008 -- but every little bit helps. There's plenty of room for improvement, and apparently rising political will, in Western New York, and we'll keep our eye (well, my eye and Stephen's eye, so two rhetorical eyes and four actual eyes) on the goings on up there. Tips, of course, are also appreciated.

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There's Gold in Jersey: Montclair's GreenWorks on Grove Gets LEED Props

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:44:29 +0000

We make no great effort to conceal our pro-New Jersey bias here at gbNYC, but it's especially gratifying when a Garden State-based project comes along that would be exciting even if it were not located a short drive -- depending on traffic -- from where Stephen and I grew up. GreenWorks on Grove, which Steve profiled earlier in its life cycle, is one such project -- an old gas station in Montclair re-imagined as a super-green 3,500-foot retail space. Considering the astonishing suite of green design elements built into GreenWorks on Grove -- from solar panels and high-performance glass to individual electric submetering and super-efficient HVAC and plumbing systems -- it was probably a given that GreenWorks would get the LEED certification it sought. And yet it's still worth celebrating just how thoroughly GreenWorks has succeeded in what was a very ambitious bit of adaptive reuse. They were awarded LEED Gold for Core and Shell earlier this week.

At the risk of simply running off a checklist of Things gbNYC Thinks Are Awesome, it's worth going into greater depth on GreenWorks' green elements, which are about as comprehensive as anything on display in the greater New York area. Permeable pavers and native landscaping reduce water runoff; recycled materials are present throughout, and 92 percent of construction waste (142 tons) was recycled; the cellulose insulation is made from 85 percent recycled newspapers; 61 percent of the exterior structure was salvaged from the former World Pottery Building. And so on. Even for us, and even for New Jersey, there's a limit to how much PDF we can regurgitate, but suffice to say that what we left out -- the 15 SEER HVAC system, the... okay, enough -- is as impressive as what we mentioned. GreenWorks on Grove has the distinction of being the first LEED-CS building in New Jersey*, but it's also unquestionably one of the greenest buildings in the state.

Which is nice, of course, but also promises to confer a very real benefit to the building's tenants -- beyond the bike racks and whatnot, the energy costs at GreenWorks promise to be notably lower than usual, and the presence of those individual electric submeters will make green leases easy to implement. It's a real achievement for all involved, from certification managers Joel Patenaude and Jason DeSalvo, architect Paul Sionas and contractors Jack Finn & Company on down. New Jersey pride can be difficult sometimes -- You've seen what's going on with the basketball team, right? You are perhaps familiar with our politics? -- but other times it's easy. GreenWorks is a project that's easy to feel proud of, even for those less Jersey-partial than your gbNYC writer/editors.

*NOTE: See my correction to this in the comments.

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Check-Plus: Upstate Montessori School Earns Energy-Efficiency Honors

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:49:37 +0000

Relative to less-clunkily named programs such as LEED and Energy Star, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority -- or NYSERDA, if you're into (relative) brevity -- doesn't get a lot of attention. And yet NYSERDA's recent awarding of its 17th High Performance Building plaque, to the Woodland Hill Montessori School in the Albany suburb of Rensselaer, casts a spotlight on NYSERDA's very deserving incentive programs. Yes, it's kind of a dim spotlight -- no offense to Montessori schools in upstate towns, but CNN isn't breaking into its regular programming to deliver this news -- but the efficiency achievements at Woodland Hill and some continued good work on the part of NYSERDA both deserve a look.

While NYSERDA hasn't handed out many plaques, the program has, by its own account, "given more than $92 million in federal and State funds to provide assistance for projects affecting more than 137 million square feet of building space in New York State" since 1999 as part of its New Construction Program, and gave Woodland Hill Montessori School $28,000 in assistance as part of its High-Performance Buildings Program, which has over 900 projects active throughout the state. The long story short, here, seems to be that the incentive program works, even when it's not doling out seven-figure sums. (More proof: the existence of companies that specialize in helping developers qualify for NYSERDA incentives) Steve wrote about NYSERDA's Smart Loan Program back in 2008, and everything you need to know about the specifics of the program is on the other side of that link, but even as New York State faces down a scary deficit, it's reassuring to see that NYSERDA is still handing out funds to worthy projects -- $28,000 is a small price to pay, after all, considering the far-reaching benefits of a building that functions as efficiently as Woodland Hill Montessori School.

Woodland Hill added 11,000 square feet of space -- a couple of classrooms, a gym, conference rooms, the usual school stuff -- with the help of that NYSERDA grant, and incorporated a host of energy-efficient elements both to the newly added space and the older building. The school's new roof and wall insulation, energy-efficient windows, high-efficiency lighting and demand-controlled ventilation are expected to save as much energy annually as is consumed by three single-family homes in a year. Again, not that bad for $28k, and certainly not that bad for a program that still flies largely under the radar.

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NYC's Steven Learner Studio Takes Top Spot in Chain of Eco-Homes Competition

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:43:42 +0000

New York City is different. This, for many of us, is what we like about it, the "more" of it all, the fact that we have more of everything -- good, bad, indifferent -- than just about any other city in the United States. All the overage can be a bit much sometimes, but even on the worst of days -- subway delays and bummer street vibes, foul weather, kooky co-workers, unpaid bills, fill it in yourself -- many of us can barely stomach the prospect of leaving this honking, vertical, mess of a city. And yet... there's something about the idea of a house of one's own, neither above nor beneath someone else's, that unquestionably works. It's probably a stretch to say that it's that urban yearning for space that helped the New York-based Steven Learner Studio design the very cool Meadowlark House, which claimed first place in the Chain of Eco-Homes Competition. But it's no stretch to describe the home as one that could make even the most ardent New Yorker wonder what life would be like with both a front and back yard.

Meadowlark House won't be built in New York City, of course. It will actually be built, though -- in Greensburg, Kansas, a town that has remade itself as a haven of sustainable building (and star of a Discovery Channel TV show) after being essentially flattened by a devastating tornado back in 2007. Greensburg GreenTown, a non-profit based in Greensburg, co-sponsored the Chain of Eco-Homes Competition along with green house-plan experts Free Green. As has been the case with the green-design pre-fab revolution taking place in post-Katrina New Orleans -- Wayne Curtis has a great piece on this in The Atlantic -- Greensburg GreenTown reflects the national trend of communities reinventing themselves as more efficient and sustainable than they had been before devastation, in any of its many forms, precipitated a change. In the case of cities such as Greensburg and New Orleans (where the process has been, perhaps predictably, more anarchic), natural disaster triggered that reinvention; in some of the other cities we've written about here, the disasters have been slower and more demographic and economic in nature. In the wake of those multiple devastations, though, it has been heartening to see how innovative and impressive has been the filling up of what was so sadly emptied out. We've still got our issues as a nation -- health care, a couple of bad wars, bigoted ventriloquist Jeff Dunham -- but it's nice to see that we're still capable of creative responses to destruction.

And Meadowlark House is unquestionably an impressively creative response to the challenge of reinventing an entire town. Steven Learner Studio has a fine reputation for its interior design and architectural work, but much of that rep was built on aesthetics -- previous SLS projects have been more likely to show up in Elle Decor than, say, Inhabitat. But Meadowlark House, which was judged the best of 439 entries from 13 countries by a panel of eight green building experts and public voters, is both peerlessly green and up to the high aesthetic standards of previous Steven Learner Studio projects. (And it finally got SLS into Treehugger! Kudos, all around!) From the building's orientation -- east-west, the better to take advantage of sunlight through the south-facing windows -- to its compact floor plan and more familiar green-design elements, Meadowlark House offers an object lesson in full-spectrum, human-scale green building. Radiant floor heating and a ducted energy recovery ventilator highlight a long list of efficient mechanical systems; the roof set-up also allows for optional photovoltaic panel installation. Most notably, the exterior walls are constructed with the state-of-the-art, Lego-style HIB-System, a German-developed pre-fab building product that's surpassingly green and easy to install. While its modest scale and single-serving size make it unlikely that we'll ever see Meadowlark House in New York City -- at least outside of an installation like last year's MoMA pre-fab home show -- it's nice to see another step forward in green pre-fab homes (they're the future, at least outside of New York) and doubly nice, for those of us who insist on feeling some pride in this weird city of ours, to see that innovation coming out of NYC. The subways are still maddening and we as a nation still need to work out this Jeff Dunham thing, but on a Monday, it's just nice to see something that works.

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LEED Silver-Hopeful Kalahari Cuts Prices on Last 12 Units

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:39:37 +0000

Back in October of 2007, only 19 units remained available at Full Spectrum's LEED Silver-hopeful Kalahari condominium development at 40 West 116th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues in Harlem. Only 7 units have moved since, and earlier this week prices were cut on the remaining 12. The asking price on a 1386-square-foot 3-bedroom, 2-bath unit is down 6 percent to $815,000, and a 1732-square-foot 4-bedroom, 3-bath apartment has been cut by 19.5 percent to $1.14 million. It's anecdotal, of course, and certainly a function of market realities here in 2009, but the price cuts are interesting to note in light of the constant barrage of positive studies and other reports extolling the inherent premium value of LEED-certified buildings and other green properties. (Note, however, that the Kalahari has yet to be formally certified by USGBC).

Nevertheless, even in light of these cuts the asking prices are still staggering, and the 95 percent sell out rate is just as impressive; it is important, though, to keep in mind that even LEED buildings are not immune to the continued instability in the New York City condominium market. You may recall that the Kalahari offers 249 total units, including 120 that were set aside as affordable housing. Each unit includes bamboo flooring, clean air filters, and Energy Star appliances. Twenty-five percent of the power at the building is drawn from solar and wind sources, an on-site Zip Car station offers hybrid automobiles, and the development features a number of green roofs, public gardens, and sustainable vegetation. The project was designed by Frederic Schwartz Architects and GF55 Partners.

The Kalahari (gbNYC)
Kalahari Slashes Prices (TRD)

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Village Care of New York Pursues LEED Silver for New Facility on Houston Street

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:08:47 +0000

Village Care of New York is a community-based non-profit organization that provides rehabilitation and long-term nursing care for patients with complicated medical needs, as well as individuals living with HIV/AIDS. The organization recently retained Levien & Company as its construction manager in connection with its new 6-story, 65,000-square-foot facility at 214-218 West Houston Street that will accommodate 105 patients. The facility will also offer a physical therapy room, dining and common areas on each floor, and a feng shui-inspired roof deck and meditation and yoga room overlooking a central bamboo courtyard. Patient rooms will provide individualized temperature control, natural daylight, and better visual access into each room for staff in order to improve response time. The project is aiming for a LEED Silver certification from USGBC and was designed by Perkins Eastman; an August 2010 opening is expected. The project team also includes structural engineers Goldstein Associates, AKF, and general contractor Marco Martelli. Village Care's current facility at 607 Hudson Street dates from 1908; the Houston Street facility is rising on the site of a former 1-story brick and concrete parking garage.

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Cooper Union's 41 Cooper Square Laboratory is Mean, Green, and Demands to be Seen

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:19:48 +0000

Fanboyish eruptions of enthusiasm and admiration are presumably not what you, The Reader, turn to gbNYC to read. (Neither are rhyming headlines, but... yeah, see what I did there?) No, you're here for the buried links to "classic" rock performances and self-referential leads and, theoretically, news on green building in Gotham. Which I do try to keep in mind, but... have you seen the new Cooper Union laboratory building at 41 Cooper Square? The building, which was designed by Morphosis and Gruzen Samton, is super-innovative inside and out, very interesting to look at, peerlessly sustainable and generally as graceful a marriage of form and function as anything of its size downtown. It may not be your cup of aesthetic tea (mmm, aesthetic tea), but 41 Cooper Square is, for green building heads, definitely worth an ogle.

We're still at the point in New York's green real estate history when we're crowning firsts, which means that 41 Cooper Square is likely to be named New York City's First LEED Platinum Academic Laboratory. Which is nice, but also kind of meaningless, and furthermore not nearly as interesting as the 41 Cooper Square itself. I'm without the architectural vocabulary to describe 41 Cooper Square with any real grace -- although the Arcspace feature linked above, and this earlier one on 41 Cooper Square's design, do that quite well -- but even to the lay-dude, the seamlessness with which 41 Cooper Square's striking sustainable elements make common cause with its innovative design is pretty impressive. And luckily, Stephen already penned a very smart-sounding preview of the building when it topped out back in June of 2008. "The building's exterior is clad in semi-transparent stainless-steel panels which can be opened by the facility manager," SDP wrote. "The panels will serve both as an aesthetic design feature, as well as a screen from the sun during summer months and insulation during colder weather." Right, exactly.

Morphosis, and 2005 Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne, designed the building to LEED Gold specs, although Platinum looks likely given the extent to which Morphosis over-delivered on what was a very ambitious plan to begin with. Inside that striking semi-transparent steel exterior -- the defining street-level aesthetic aspect, alongside the building's uniquely contoured curvature -- is a super-comprehensive suite of green-design elements. A co-generation system and radiant heat and cooling will generate and conserve power (respectively), while carbon dioxide sensors in each room automatically modulate lights and ventilation in unoccupied rooms. A green roof and low-flow fixtures are projected to save 600,000 gallons of water annually; fume hoods circulate air 12 times daily, disposing of that funky laboratory air at a safe distance from the street below. Which is cool, all of it, and eminently worth reading about.

The aesthetics, though, are what I keep coming back to. While the building's architectural distinction might not be surprising, given Cooper Union's status as one of the nation's foremost architecture and design schools, the interior and exterior looks of this "vertical campus" are so futuristic, so consistently surprising, that I can't help but think it would impress even someone who looks at a lot more buildings than I do. There's always the comments section if I'm wrong, but check out the pictures on that Arcspace feature, two of which are attached to this post. I had to keep reminding myself they were photos, rather than renderings. I'm lucky enough to be in that neighborhoods most Thursdays (come by Scratcher between 5pm and 7pm, I love signing autographs), but those who aren't usually around there might want to build in a trip. It's just as stunning in person.

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