Thornton Tomasetti provided detailed design for the façade and structure of a new 52,500-seat stadium that will be home to the A.S. Roma football team. The Stadio della Roma’s modern design includes echoes of the Colosseum.
The new stadium’s fabric membrane roof was inspired by the velarium, the ancient Roman amphitheater’s awning system. The Stadio della Roma’s roof is based on the principle of a bicycle wheel. A compression ring on the outer edge is connected by radial cable trusses to two sets (upper and lower) of tension rings that surround the inner opening. The “bicycle wheel” solution is much lighter and more elegant than a traditional steel-truss system.
The ultramodern glass and metal façade of the Stadio della Roma will be wrapped in a floating screen of travertine quarried from the same region as the stone of its ancient predecessor. Each piece of stone, arranged to suggest the arches of the Colosseum, will be backed by carbon-fiber mesh and supported via an innovative aluminum fixing system that transfers the loads to a floating steel structure of piers and lintels.
Privately funded by the club, the Stadio della Roma is scheduled to be ready for the 2019 season.
Are you curious about what other projects Thornton Tomasetti is working on? Visit their website or read about them in our blog!
The lower costs and increased acceptance of distributed generation, storage, and energy efficiency are changing the hundred-year-old relationship between utilities and their customers. Throughout the last century, utilities generated and distributed power to their customers. The utility was granted a franchise area and an authorized return on any investments in exchange for the obligation to provide power to each customer within the franchise area.
Rapid changes in technology are turning that arrangement on its head. Customers now have the ability to generate and store their own power, often at a lower cost than purchasing power from the utility. Customers are also becoming more efficient in their use of power and may actually sell excess power back to the utility. This has led utility regulators to question whether the regulations of the last hundred years are still appropriate, or whether a new approach is required that allows utilities to generate revenues and profits from services other than traditional investments in generation, transmission, and distribution facilities. The New York Public Service Commission’s Reforming the Energy Vision proceeding is showing how it can be done.
Deploying energy solutions so all Massachusetts residents benefit from a clean energy economy.
Earlier this spring, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s (LISC) Massachusetts Green Retrofit Initiative reached a milestone as 10 of our 20 multifamily affordable housing partners signed onto the Better Buildings Challenge (BBC). Started by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, the BBC provides ongoing technical expertise and support for building owners who commit to a 20% portfolio-wide energy reduction over 10 years. Combined, our 10 leaders own and operate over 22,000 units of housing across Massachusetts, and are transforming what it means to be green for the rest of the affordable housing sector.
But how did we get here? Thanks to the support of the Barr Foundation, more than six years ago LISC created the Green Retrofit Initiative, a program with a goal to accelerate Massachusetts’ multifamily affordable housing owners toward an efficient, clean-energy future. Through this initiative, LISC connected owners to energy efficiency and renewable energy funding options and provided them with technical expertise. Our building science partner, New Ecology, Inc., helped owners analyze their housing portfolios’ baseline energy use, and develop and implement strategic plans to accomplish their desired energy savings goals.
The results have been impressive. Through the Initiative, owners have successfully navigated Massachusetts’ complex utility programs to realize consistent and predictable energy efficiency improvements. From 2012 to 2015, participants experienced average savings of 29% for electric projects and 23% for gas projects. Overall, we have worked with 50 multifamily affordable housing owners across the state to benchmark 17,000 units, retrofit more than 5,000 units, and leverage more than $17 million in financing.
The experiences of participating building owners have also informed LISC’s work to inform smart policies for energy efficiency and renewable technologies for low- and moderate- income housing. We believe that the golden moment to achieve deeper energy efficiency savings and to incorporate long-lasting clean energy technologies is when an affordable housing project is slated for a substantial rehabilitation. This happens only every 15 to 20 years. So, the critical policy question is, how can we make sure it’s easier for affordable housing owners to pursue deeper energy efficiency savings and clean-energy technologies during this window of opportunity?
We believe the golden moment to achieve deeper energy efficiency savings is at the time of an affordable housing project’s substantial rehabilitation.
Our current work is dedicated to answering this question. We believe the first step is for owners to know exactly which efficiency and clean energy measures will work best for them and their specific projects. This requires comprehensive energy audits in the design process to illuminate what is possible. The second step is to collaborate with the state’s housing finance agencies, utilities, and other partners to make sure that, once owners know the best options for them, they will have a predictable source of funding to implement those deeper efficiency and clean energy measures.
LISC applauds all its Green Retrofit Initiative owners for their leadership and efforts in greening the affordable housing sector across the state. We look forward to continuing this work—supporting owners on the ground, while also ensuring that policy discussions are informed by their stories and experiences, so that all Massachusetts residents benefit from a clean energy economy.
In the photo above, Clifton Geissler, director of maintenance, Maloney Properties, Inc., and Dariela Maga, housing project manager, Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation, are pictured in their Allston–Brighton green retrofit project.
The Green Retrofit Initiative (GRI) is a program designed to help affordable housing owners navigate our state’s utility programs to achieve energy efficiency savings. In partnership with our building science expert,New Ecology, Inc., LISC Boston has worked with over 50 multifamily affordable housing owners statewide to benchmark a total of 17,000 units, retrofit more than 5,000 units, and leverage over $17 million. The Green Retrofit Initiative’s approach has demonstrated that energy and water retrofits can consistently result in 20 percent energy savings.
This just in from the EPA New England Regional Office: Boston Makes the Top Dozen of U.S. Cities with the Most Energy Star Certified Buildings!
BOSTON – Today the EPA released its a list of U.S. cities that had the most certified Energy Star buildings in 2015. As you could probably expect, Boston is included in this list, and “recognized for its continuing commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions and save money through energy efficiency.”
In 2015, we were number 11 position among the list of top 25 U.S. metropolitan areas. Boston had 157 buildings that were Energy Star certified. This is equivalent to cutting greenhouse gas emissions from 38,000 passenger vehicles, and saving more than $75 million in annual utility bills.
The cities that triumphed over us were Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York City, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Denver and Phoenix.
“Every year, more cities are turning to energy efficiency not only to protect the environment, but also to strengthen their local economies. Boston is demonstrating that energy efficiency is a cost-effective way to improve public health and build a brighter future for their youngest residents,” said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office.
From the EPA—
Energy use in commercial buildings accounts for 16 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of more than $100 billion per year. Since 1999, more than 27,000 buildings across America have earned EPA’s Energy Star certification, which signifies proven superior energy performance. On average, these certified buildings use 35 percent less energy and are responsible for 35 percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions than typical buildings. These buildings have saved more than $3.8 billion on utility bills and prevented greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions from the annual electricity use of more than 2.6 million homes. Many common building types can earn the Energy Star, including office buildings, K-12 schools, hotels, and retail stores.
For more than 20 years, American citizens have looked to EPA’s Energy Star program for guidance on how to save energy, save money and protect the environment. Behind each blue label is a product, building, or home that is independently certified to use less energy and cause fewer of the emissions that contribute to climate change. Today, Energy Star is the most widely recognized symbol for energy efficiency in the world, helping families and businesses save $300 billion on utility bills, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by two billion metric tons since 1992.
On April 4th, we will be holding a special event focusing on the connections between green building, sustainability, and social equity.
Social Equity is typically conceptualized as the third–and least significant– component of the triple bottom line. While LEED has equilibrated environmental concerns with economic ones, we are just at the beginning of developing tools that allow us to measure and examine social equity results in a similar fashion.
New programs from the International Living Future Institute like the Living Building Challenge, and JUST Organizations label, as well as new Social Equity Pilot credits in LEED v4 are beginning to raise the discourse around social equity to allow us to examine the social equity impacts of our organizations, our work, and our communities.
We will have presentations from three panelists- Francis Janes, director of the JUST Organizations labeling program for ILFI, Shawn Hesse, co-author of the new LEED Social Equity Pilot Credits, and Tony Ransom, Chair of the the Boston chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (BosNOMA). These distinguished guests will be discussing the importance of a focus on social equity in design, construction, and operations of our buildings, communities, and our organizations.
The event will be April 4th, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at 50 Milk St,15th Floor- “Aristotle” Conference Room, Boston 02109.
The Green Retrofit Initiative (GRI) is a program designed to help affordable housing owners navigate our state’s utility programs to achieve energy efficiency savings. In partnership with our building science expert,New Ecology, Inc., LISC Boston has worked with over 50 multifamily affordable housing owners statewide to benchmark a total of 17,000 units, retrofit more than 5,000 units, and leverage over $17 million. The Green Retrofit Initiative’s approach has demonstrated that energy and water retrofits can consistently result in 20 percent energy savings.
