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USA - GEORGIA - Giant Photovoltaic Canopy Tops Net-Positive Kendeda Building In Atlanta
US firms Miller Hull Partnership and Lord Aeck Sargent have designed a highly sustainable building at Georgia Tech university that generates more electricity and recycles more water than it uses.
US firms Miller Hull Partnership and Lord Aeck Sargent have designed a highly sustainable building at Georgia Tech university that generates more electricity and recycles more water than it uses.
The project – officially called The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design – is located at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a public research university in central Atlanta.
The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design is in Georgia
The educational building was designed by Seattle's Miller Hull Partnership in collaboration with local firm Lord Aeck Sargent, which was purchased by tech startup Katerra in 2018.
The project was backed by the Kendeda Fund, a private family foundation that supports a range of social and environmental initiatives. Skanska served as the general contractor.
The project is a highly sustainable building
The facility recently earned certification from the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute under its Living Building Challenge – one of the most rigorous green-building certification programmes in the world. The facility is considered to be a "regenerative building."
"Regenerative buildings create more resources than they use, including energy and water," the team said.
Classrooms and a design studio are included in the design
"The project's goal is to support the educational mission of Georgia Tech while transforming the architecture, engineering and construction industry in the Southeast US by advancing regenerative building and innovation."
The facility – which totals 47,000 square feet (4,366 square metres) – holds a range of spaces for students and faculty.
These include a design studio, two large classrooms, several laboratories, a seminar room, an auditorium and office space. There also is a rooftop garden with an apiary and pollinator garden.
The building's rooftop garden
Certain areas of the building are open to the public for special events.
While designing the facility, the team took inspiration from vernacular architecture – in particular, large porches that are commonly found on Southern homes.
"The project reimagines this regionally ubiquitous architectural device for the civic scale of the campus," said Miller Hull.
Rectangular in plan, the building is topped with a giant white canopy supported by steel columns. On the west elevation, the roof extends 40 feet (12 metres) to form a large, shaded area below with steps and seating.
A white canopy tops the building
In addition to providing shade, the canopy generates electricity. Its 900-plus solar panels form a 330-kilowatt array that produces enough power to exceed the building's energy needs.
For the exterior cladding, the team incorporated a mix of accoya wood, metal, glass and recycled masonry. The foundation walls are made of concrete.
Materials such as metal form the exterior cladding
Mass timber was used for the structural system due to it having a smaller embodied carbon footprint compared to concrete and steel, the team said.
In large-span areas of the building, the team used glue-laminated trusses with steel bottom chords.
Details on the building's exterior
"This hybrid approach reduces the quantity of wood required while making routing of building services more efficient," the team said.
For the structural decking, nail-laminated timber panels were made off-site and craned into place. A local nonprofit organisation, Lifecycle Building Center, sourced the lumber from discarded movie sets in Georgia.
Large windows flood spaces with natural light
Structural elements, along with mechanical systems, were left exposed so they could serve as a teaching tool.
Salvaged and recycled materials are found throughout the facility. For instance, stairs in the building's atrium are made of lumber off-cuts, and countertops and benches are made of storm-felled trees.
Mechanical systems were left exposed
Water recycling is also part of the building's sustainable design. Rainwater is captured, treated and used in sinks, showers and drinking fountains. In turn, that greywater is channelled to a constructed wetland, where it is treated and used to support vegetation.
The facility is also fitted with composting toilets, which nearly eliminate the use of potable water. The human waste is turned into fertilizer that is used off-site.
The rooftop has a pollinator garden
The building recently earned its Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification following a year-long assessment, in which it needed to prove it is net-positive for energy and water usage.
"It generates more energy from onsite renewable sources than it uses," the team said. "The building also collects and treats more rainwater onsite than it uses for all purposes, including for drinking."
The LBC programme evaluates buildings in seven categories – place, water, energy, health and happiness, materials, equity and beauty.
The Kendeda Building is the 28th building in the world to achieve LBC certification and the first in Georgia. The state's warm and humid climate poses a particular challenge when it comes to energy efficiency, the team said.
A large classroom
A communal workspace
"In spite of this, over the performance period the building generated 225 per cent of the energy needed to power all of its electrical systems from solar panels on its roof," the team said.
"It also collected, treated, and infiltrated 15 times the amount of water needed for building functions."
Students gather under the canopy outside
Other American projects that are designed to meet the LBC standards include the wood-clad Frick Environmental Center in Pittsburgh, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. It achieved certification in 2018.
Photography is by Jonathan Hillyer and Gregg Willett.
Project credits:
Design architect: The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP
Collaborating and prime architect: Lord Aeck Sargent, a Katerra Company
Contractor: Skanska USA
Landscape architect: Andropogon
Civil engineer: Long Engineering
Mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer: PAE and Newcomb & Boyd
Structural engineer: Uzun & Case
Greywater systems: Biohabitatssolar panels
PODCAST: Vertical Farming Podcast - Season 3 Episode 29 - Nicholas Dyner. Nick Is The CEO of Moleaer
In this episode, Harry and Nick discuss Nick’s extensive background working in the water treatment industry
Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Nicholas Dyner. Nick is the CEO of Moleaer, an organization that produces commercial nanobubble generators to deliver sustainable, chemical-free water quality improvement for agriculture, reservoirs, lakes, ponds, and more.
In this episode, Harry and Nick discuss Nick’s extensive background working in the water treatment industry. Nick expounds on nanobubble technology, what it is and how it can be used to improve vertical farming and the agricultural industry as a whole. Finally, Harry and Nick talk about the ongoing struggle for universal access to safe water and how advancements in technology can help restore and improve the quality of sea life.
Listen & Subscribe
Preventing Diseases Coming Into Your Fresh Produce
“If people don’t make the investment to understand water quality, once they realize the damage to their produce, it might be too late
Sankaran:
“The first thing is to understand the controlling factors. How do you make sure of the soil and the water quality health. Our job is the water quality.” Outside of heavy metals, some micro-nutrients are toxic to plants in moderate concentrations or specific conditions. KETOS looks at water quality as the first aspect in food safety because elements or toxins in water are often filtered and held by soil.
“If people don’t make the investment to understand water quality, once they realize the damage to their produce, it might be too late. One of the most common things, which we haven’t measured yet but actively looking into it, is how we can understand e-coli. We always end up having e-coli outbreaks and product recalls because of e-coli. We need to get ahead of that because there’s millions of dollars of losses and food waste.”
Safety issues
Kris Nightengale, VP Agricultural Sales notes: “If you look at the US data regarding food safety issues and over 80% of the cases had livestock grazing in proximity or higher in the watershed in relation to the produce field. Indoor and vertical agriculture seeks to solve the problem by taking the food out of the open and into a highly controlled enclosed environment.” Some pathogens are known to translocate in plants and become a part of the cell structure. This means that no amount of washing is going to disinfect the produce.
The KETOS shield continuously monitors the pH, ORP, and chlorine, which ensures chlorine can be maintained at the proper level to ensure effective sanitization. Even though indoor production facilities go to great lengths to filter and treat influent and circulating water, pathogens can still be introduced through fertilizer, worker, and pests.
“Healthy plants are not the hosts for pathogens that unhealthy plants are. Because indoor production works on a circulating loop system, nutrient imbalances can move very quickly through a facility. It’s not uncommon for indoor growers to watch a perfectly healthy crop start exhibiting symptoms of changing vigor in a matter of hours. Water tests are generally infrequent and there is a significant lag time from the lab. KETOS is filling in the massive data gap that growers can directly and immediately tie to crop health”, Nightengale affirms.
Keeping the water nutritious
One of the biggest issues that the US is dealing with right now, not necessarily how good the water treatment plants are, but how good the piping across the distribution network. Those pipes could have been laid out 100 years ago and could be contaminated with toxins. Knowing the water quality, both at the source and the destination is very important.
“KETOS is deploying systems to help with irrigation as well as help implement a broader distribution network for leak detection, understanding lead contamination in pipes, so that repairs can be conducted proactively vs. an expensive infrastructure replacement”, Sankaran says. “You cannot act upon what you don’t measure.”
“Agriculture has successfully implemented technology across many facets of its operations and its time for water management to be a more important discussion as this is a precious asset that can impact not just the farmers but of all of the consumers at large .”
Nightengale adds: “KETOS is able to address the gaps in the marketplace today for water intelligence in-depth, and the right kind of data can provide you insights for what’s actually occurring at your fingertips.”
For more information:
KETOS
Meena Sankaran, Founder, and CEO
meena@KETOS.co
Kris Nightengale
kris.nightengale@KETOS.co
www.KETOS.co
Publication date: Tue 15 Sep 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
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