Page 25 - College Planning & Management, September 2018

Facilities CAMPUS SPACES
At First Sight
Diverse, innovative materials are
available for the building envelope,
adding impactful visual interest as well
as energy efficiency to campus facilities.
BY SCOTT BERMAN
CREATING THE BEST building envelopes on campuses, no matter what the building type, is a multipronged process. Architects, contractors, and higher education
administrators must weigh the options in meeting rigorous, evolv- ing standards; overcoming challenges unique to any project and enabling creative designs to balance varying needs.
Three recent, diverse examples—a campus residence, an energy facility, and an academic building, each in a different set- ting—are notable in how they have achieved goals with advanced envelopes in concert with other systems.
Rising High at Cornell Tech
Opened in 2017, a new building is a signature part of the new Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City and a
notable example of advanced envelope systems. That building, a student, faculty, and staff residence called The House at Cornell Tech—Handel Architects designed it; the Hudson Companies and related companies developed it—complies with the stringent international Passive House energy consumption standard.
Buildings that meet that Passive House standard “consume 60- 70 percent less energy than typical building stock,” the university points out. The 270-foot-high Cornell Tech structure is the highest residential building in the world to meet that standard, and is also New York City’s first Passive House, according to a Cornell Tech news release.
As Handel Architects puts it, Passive House buildings marshal advanced envelope, ventilation, and heating and cooling systems “to dramatically reduce” their energy consumption. A key compo- nent: “a heavily insulated, tightly sealed building envelope.”
The architectural firm says, “to create the building’s high- performance skin,” they designed the exterior wall “with R-values ranging from R-5 to R-40 for an overall average of R-19,” used “a prefabricated metal panel system,” and “minimized the amount of glazing to 23 percent.” The glazing features triple-glazed windows and their frames “inserted and sealed in the shop” into an exterior wall panel manufactured by Eastern Exterior Wall Systems.
There also was what turned out to be an exacting, challenging process to ensure that the envelope’s prefabricated metal panel system contained no thermal bridges. To achieve that, technicians designed a small but crucial component that “thermally separated the outer layer of the façade from the interior,” according to the architectural firm. According to Deborah Moelis of Handel Archi- tects, things are going well; more about that later.
An Efficient Envelope at Stanford University
A recent project in a different setting, Stanford University’s campus in northern California, presented different envelope op- tions, given the region’s mild climate. Further, the exterior and location of the project, the university’s Central Energy Facility—as the architect points out not traditionally a building type calling for evocative design—also presented an aesthetic challenge or two.
SEPTEMBER 2018 / COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT 25
PHOTO © TIM GRIFFITH
PHOTO © SCOTT BERMAN