LEEDing Gardens to the sun

摘要

When the Chicago Botanic Garden decided to build a state-of-the-art plant science center, one of their goals was to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. In 2010, one year after the building opened, they did just that. The Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation and Science Center, which houses laboratories devoted to the study of plants and soil, received points in six categories, including sustainable sites, water efficiency, and energy. To qualify for LEED Gold, the design team, from Booth Hansen Chicago, hired consultants from the nonprofit energy-efficiency think tank Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). The construction documents were already complete by the time RMI joined the team, and they made numerous suggestions that resulted in rethinking the entire project. "The biggest energy consumption is the mechanical systems," says Jean O'Brien Gibbons of Grumman/Butkus Associates, the project's engineering consultants. "We really had to stop and re-evaluate all the systems."