Another year, another fantastic chance to tour some of Boston's most innovative and sustainable building projects by bike! This year's bike tour is scheduled for August 26, and participants will have the pleasure of touring green building projects in Allston and Brighton. Allston/Brighton is very much a place in transition with various climate exposure risks that need to be considered in the development process. Come view how some projects are getting that right, and be prepared for a highly informative exploration of landscape architecture along our bike tour stops. You can sign up here.
Organized by the Emerging Professionals (EPMA) Committee, the annual bike tour is one of our most popular events. What's better than fresh air, exercise, and Green Buildings?
Bring your helmet for safety, a bike lock for when you go in the buildings, water for hydration, and, as always, good vibes for this fun event. Sign up now and stay tuned for more updates!
Thank you to NB Development Group for their generous sponsorship of this event!
Yesterday evening (June 28), a joint presentation and tour of Arup and Tsoi/Kobus Design brought together more than 40 professionals in the green building industry. Both located at 60 Street, Arup and Tsoi/Kobus Design have designed their offices with sustainability and wellness in mind.
These two leading-edge firms prepared a joint presentation and tour on how they each approached the design of their new spaces. The discussion included design process overviews, comparing and contrasting requirements of LEED, WELL, and Fitwel certifications, lessons learned, and the benefits of implementing WELL, Fitwel and LEED. The tour began at Tsoi/Kobus Design on the 18th floor before we head to Arup’s office on the 10th floor.
In order to meet WELL-compliant features, both offices incorporated the following strategies including material selections that promote good indoor air quality; circadian lighting systems that simulate daylight; “active movement design” layouts with sit/stand desks; ventilation to optimize air quality through filtration; and furniture and finishes with minimal VOCs and contaminants.
Tsoi/Kobus Design's open project space, an unconventional combination of a waiting room, a presentation room, and an open kitchen, took an alternative approach towards not only the spatial design but also the requirements to meet the WELL certification. The Arup office, the first WELL Gold certified in New England, was also designed to meet LEED v4 Platinum and Fitwel 3 STAR certification, serving as a living laboratory to test its own wellbeing assessment to help quantify the impact of health and well-being strategies in the workplace. As practices in the green building industry that promotes people-centered design and social sustainability, it is important that both offices represent these core values with their own office design as paragons, inspiring more industry leaders to follow.
Huge thank you to Arup and Tsoi/Kobus Design staffs for holding the tour and all the attendees for participating from the USGBC MA Chapter!
Yesterday, approximately 40 professionals from the green building industry joined together to take a tour of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Cambridge, MA. Led by Jana Silsby of Perkins Eastman, the highlight of the tour was a very impressive solar PV system (pictured on the left). Although the school's budget couldn't allow for a net-zero design, the school itself is still 82% more energy efficient than the average elementary school, a remarkable accomplishment for Cambridge's green, net-zero effort.
Coupled with the solar PV system, the school also installed a multitude of energy efficiency initiatives including over 60 geothermal wells, daylight-harvesting windows, and a gray water storage system. Another impactful initiative Jana mentioned was that the students will be involved in learning about the importance of green building through their own school's design. The teachers plan to incorporate the buildings' water and energy consumption into the curriculum in order to assimilate the children into Cambridge's net zero way of thinking. In addition to the curriculum, students are also involved in the green effort through the school's garden, establishing a fascinating synergy between nature, the students, and their own city.
Wayne J. Griffin Electric Inc., the contractor of the school's rebuilding, hired CivicSolar and Zapotec Energy to collaborate on the building's design, engineering, and construction, creating an environmental model that will definitely have an impact on future buildings, especially in Massachusetts.
The USGBC MA sends a huge thank you to everyone who participated in this tour, both attendees and people involved in the project!
What makes a building tic? How much goes into designing a high-end, sustainable apartment complex? The Eddy in Boston is a state-of-the-art building in East Boston and it's proof that apartments can be both beautiful and good for the environment.
Join us for a tour of Gerding Edlen's innovative, 250-unit residential complex with direct access to LoPresti Park, a city green space where residents and their families gather to relax, engage in water activities as well as enjoy the unmatched views of the city skyline. The Eddy has a state of the art co-generation plant on site which generates the electricity and hot water for the building.
The tour will circuit the mechanical rooms, co-gen plant, common spaces as well as the roof deck.
Speaking of the roof deck, once the tour concludes, Gerding Edlen will host an outdoors networking gathering with food, drinks, and plenty of fun!for 20%
Use the code MAEarthWeek20 for 20% off any ticket type.
Last night, 40 colleagues in the green building industry gathered to tour Northeastern University’s new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex. Members from the design team, Payette and Arup, Northeastern facilities, and Suffolk Construction lead the way to share and discuss the many sustainable features of the soon to be LEED Gold building.
The tour started in the atrium, pictured left. The building was designed to balance the high energy consumption by the high-end lab space and the low energy consumption of the office space. The building also contains a large auditorium, study spaces and a soon to be cafe.
The tour first brought us to the penthouse mechanical space. The building uses a cascade system to transfer air. The labs were designed with modular furnishing for the researcher to adapt the space as needed. The labs contain occupancy sensors with control lighting to fluctuate depending on occupant traffic and daylight.
One of the unique features of the building was its emergency ventilation system. During a fire, one full side of the building's windows swivel open along with the front doors on the other side to allow fresh air to travel from one side to the other, minimizing smoke build up.
The auditorium within the concrete wall is pictured to the right. A 30″ concrete wall separates the auditorium from the noisy Amtrak and MBTA station abutting the building. It was quiet in there! It is furnished with FSC certified, locally sourced wood panels to enhance the acoustics of the space. The auditorium sits on top of a plenum which supplies air to the space.
The USGBC- MA would like to thank Luke Troup for organizing, and Payette, Arup, Northeastern Facilities, and Suffolk Construction for leading the tour. Also, thank you to Suffolk Construction for sponsoring the event!
