December 6, 2002—The Sustainable Buildings Industry Council (SBIC) recently announced the winning entries in its 2002 “Best Practice” Sustainability Awards program, which recognizes innovation and excellence in market-ready green building and building product design among SBIC members.
The winning projects were divided into five categories: Sustainable Policy Initiatives; Buildings: Residential; Buildings: Small Commercial; Building: School; and Sustainable Design Curriculum.
The winning projects were:
The Industry Foundation of Cool Metal Roofing Coalition—a nonprofit, unincorporated association founded by five industry associations in 2002 with the mission of educating architects, building owners, specifiers, codes and standards officials, and other stakeholders about the sustainable, energy-related benefits of metal roofing.
Passive Solar House Plans by Sun Plans, Inc.—the only house plan company in the United States that exclusively markets existing designs for passive solar house plans on a national basis. All of the designs are based on the Passive Solar Design Strategies: Guidelines for Home Builders as promoted by SBIC. Approximately half of the house plan book is dedicated to passive solar and energy efficiency in general.
The Rural Advancement Foundation International – USA—a private, nonprofit organization in North Carolina that works with rural farmers to promote conservation and agricultural biodiversity. In their new building, they wanted to provide offices for the organization staff, six rental offices for like-minded small nonprofits, and space for the Don Pollitt Conference Center. The building features numerous energy-efficient and environmentally sensitive strategies. The energy consumption target was set in the early stages of design, and ENERGY-10, a computer simulation software tool developed by NREL and promoted by SBIC, was used to model the building’s energy consumption. Knowing the energy consumption target aided discussions with engineers to determine optimal sizing for the HVAC system.
Radnor Elementary School—Gilbert Architects, the firm that worked on the school, researched cost-effective ways to include methods of sustainable green architecture into educational facility design. The result was a new Radnor Elementary School that includes numerous applications of sustainable green architecture and construction methods, including optimized building orientation, an energy-efficient geothermal mechanical system, enhanced daylighting, maximized indoor air quality, site and wildlife preservation, construction waste recycling methods, and maintenance and cleaning protocols. Environmental links are also tied into the educational curriculum.
Ball State University’s Clustered Minors in Environmentally Sustainable Practices Program—To address the growing need for students at Ball State University to increase their environmental literacy, a cluster of interdepartmental minors has been designed to offer new interdisciplinary opportunities for students to study environmentally sustainable practices. Existing academic minors in Environmental Policy and in Energy have demonstrated the potential for such interdisciplinary curricula to succeed. An advantage to this cluster of academic minors is the opportunity to reinforce Ball State’s unique capacity to support cross-disciplinary work in environmental studies and to bring together students from respective minors to share their diverse perspectives as they contribute to a common, integrated, closing course of this cluster.
