Sustainability goals and requirements can be challenging in construction and renovation projects. But they can also be impressive, effective features that contribute to successful commercial real estate projects.
Manufacturing site solutions
Photo courtesy of Arium AE.
Arium AE served as both the Architect and MEP Engineer for the construction of a high-tech, electronics manufacturing facility in Germantown that included several unique, sustainable features.
To effectively manage runoff from both the roof of the two-story, 140,000-square-foot building and the site’s parking areas, Arium AE and Macris, Hendricks & Glascock, PA (MHG), the project’s civil engineer, devised a unique combination of stormwater management structures.
Large planter boxes were integrated into the aesthetic of the building and the site. They were filled with a variety of plantings that provide landscaping to soften the front of the building. Yet those planters were also specifically engineered to withstand heavy rainfall.
“The large structures feature eight-inch-thick concrete walls that are eight feet deep with only two feet above the sidewalk grade,” said Torsten Meuschke, Arium AE Project Manager. “They are finished with a thin, modern horizontal stacked stone appearance that is applied via form liners to the concrete when cast in place, seamlessly integrating with the building’s elevations and surroundings.”
The associated surface parking lot was outfitted with both surface-graded and structural bioretention cells. Underground modular wetland systems were installed beneath portions of the lot. A bio-retention pond was also created between the building and an adjacent hospital.
Optimizing daylight
During construction of the 40TEN office building in Baltimore, Chesapeake Contracting Group installed a complex network of low-voltage control equipment to automatically adjust the tint of the storefront windows.
More than simply a lighting convenience for occupants, the SageGlass electrochromic glazing system prevents solar heat gain by as much as 93%.
“The system uses a combination of predictive and real-time data for current weather, the position of the sun relative to the building, the building site/orientation, current occupancy, and current time of day to automatically adjust the window tint throughout the storefront,” said David Wilson, Assistant Project Manager. “Every single pane of glass has a unique zero-to-10, low-volt feed that controls the amount of window tint in that pane. There is also a manual control function that will allow the windows to be turned to full tint in the conference rooms/offices, such that you can ‘dim the lights’ for a presentation by dimming the amount of natural light let into the room.”
Photo courtesy of Chesapeake Contracting.
Chesapeake Contracting crafted the installation in partnership with Chesapeake Glazing, Saint Gobain, and KCI Technologies.
The adjustable windows paired with daylight sensors on overhead lighting allow the lumen level inside to remain relatively consistent throughout the day while reducing the electrical load from lighting.
“I’m impressed by the simplicity of the technology at its foundation,” Wilson said. “It seems like a no brainer. Yes, if you dim the windows, less light comes into the building leading to less heat gain in the building.
“When you expand that simple idea to 10,000-plus panes of glass, the system gets much more complicated but no less simple. Each piece of glass gets its own wire. Those wires get grouped into bundles that go into zone controllers per floor. The zone controllers go into a central floor controller and ultimately the floor controllers link into one computer running a web-based program specific to our building.”
Although the concept is simple, installation wasn’t.
“It sure isn’t easy to design, coordinate, organize, label, connect, and test, then re-test, then re-test, then re-test,” Wilson said. “Jokes aside, it’s on autopilot now that the system is commissioned.”
The beauty of demolition
On the site of a largely vacant shopping center in Dundalk, ARCO Design/Build executed a dramatic real estate transformation, creating a state-of-the-art, 442,200 square-foot warehouse onsite and achieving LEED Gold certification in the process.
Photo courtesy of ARCO Design/Build.
Several aspects of the Diamond Point Plaza project contributed to its sustainability – highly efficient energy and water systems, remediation of a brownfield site, and its successful implementation of heightened stormwater quality requirements, which changed mid-project.
The venture, however, got especially high points for “construction, demolition and waste management,” said Drew Enstice, Vice President of ARCO Design/Build.
In total, the project team crushed 22,000 tons of concrete from the demolished building slabs, foundations and the site’s hardscaping, and reused that material beneath the slab of the new warehouse, said Steve Powers, Design/Build Manager. The team also “milled 50,000 square yards of existing asphalt and all of it was reused under the new pavements.”
The project’s sustainability was also boosted by its use of steel.
“The steel we use is all made from recycled material,” Enstice said. “That’s pretty normal, but people don’t realize how much recycled material goes into the steel in buildings… I visited a big steel manufacturing plant in New York and what you see is crunched up appliances, refrigerators, stoves, car parts and a lot of other scrap metal going into a furnace where it is melted down and made into new steel.”