By Ryan Duffy, Communications Fellow
Join us on Friday, April 29th at Hampshire College for the school's ribbon-cutting ceremony in honor of its flagship newest building: the R.W. Kern Center. The Center is a living symbol of Hampshire’s values in practice and ideas in action. The college’s first new building in three decades, it was built with the goal of becoming only the ninth building certified under the world’s most rigorous green building standard, the Living Building Challenge (LBC): operating net-zero energy, water, and waste; built using materials mainly from local and regional sources; and avoiding toxic “red list” materials, right down to the duct tape allowed on site.
The Center will house the offices of admissions and financial aid, classrooms, student lounges and social areas, and a coffee bar. It was also built as a living laboratory for ongoing studies of the building and its systems.
The Kern Center is one of the major projects of Hampshire’s broad sustainability initiative. The college has committed to making campus operations carbon neutral by 2020, and is also planning for the campus to go 100 percent solar this year.
The building was constructed by Wright Builders – a Chapter Sponsoring Partner – and engaged many members of the Living Building Collaborative which works as part of the Chapter to advance buliding performance throughout the Commonwealth.
Read more about the Kern Center on Hampshire's website, and learn about their commitment to sustainability.
This event will be on April 29th at Hampshire College (893 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002).
Photos taken from Hampshire's website.