Manifesting Potential

As the first LEED certified public school in Ohio, Licking County’s Career + Technology Center (C-TEC) earned state-wide attention. Central Ohio’s Green Building Council, along with a number of other state organizations, sent representatives to observe the school’s innovative leadership in action, and C-TEC still provides tours of the new facilities for numerous interested parties. When asked why C-TEC decided to go green, the school district facilities manager at the time, Rick Orr, tells people that the energy savings potential was a primary factor in C-TEC’s decision to pursue LEED certification.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (PA DEP) Southeast Regional Office Building (SROB) in downtown Norristown was intended by PA DEP to be Pennsylvania’s “Greenest Building”. In line with the building’s conception, it received the Environmental Design and Construction Excellence in Design Award Grand Prize in 2005 for government buildings.

The Winston Preparatory School’s Norwalk campus consists of 13.2 acres and seven existing buildings. 7group in collaboration with other Alliance for Regeneration members engaged Winston students, faculty, staff and the community in a highly interactive master planning process focused on regenerative design and development practices to create a campus Master Plan. Winston’s “educate the whole child” philosophy aligns with this regenerative/whole living systems approach in ways that allow the school’s curricula to be aimed at restoring and regenerating the health of a degraded site and to optimize the Winston experience as “a colony of learners”.

The new full-service Capital Health Medical Center – Hopewell admitted its first patients in November 2011, replacing the healthcare system’s Mercer campus facility in Trenton, NJ, and is the state’s first hospital to earn LEED Gold certification. This suburban 165-acre site near Interstate 95 allows Capital Health to reach a larger population base than the previous urban location on a constrained site that rendered any expansion extremely costly and difficult.

The renovation of the Friends Center, a National Historic Landmark in downtown Philadelphia, began as a modest capital improvements project. Now, by embracing the Quaker tenet that peace and justice depend upon restoring the Earth’s ecological integrity, the Center stands as a model of sustainable design after achieving the highest LEED Platinum (NCv2.1) score in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (PA DEP) Philipsburg office building is home to the Moshannon District Headquarters. In line with several other PA DEP office buildings, design of the Philipsburg office space prioritized energy and water efficiency, a high quality indoor air environment and the use of sustainable building materials for a total cost comparative to that of a conventional office building. In addition, the eight-acre building site is located on a former strip mine, of which less than three acres was allowable buildable area. Originally consisting mostly of shale chips, this site was converted to a native meadow in conjunction with facility construction.

The Berks County Community Foundation (BCCF), a nonprofit whose mission is to promote philanthropy and improve the quality of life for the residents of Berks County, Pennsylvania, earned LEED Platinum (NCv2.2) certification for this headquarters and community conference center. The first LEED certified office building in the greater Reading area, this facility serves both to strengthen the Foundation’s presence in the community and to set an example of affordable sustainable building.

Since 1983, Chartwell School in Seaside, CA, has been helping students with learning differences (primarily dyslexia and ADD) develop skills to learn successfully and return to mainstream education. When Chartwell decided to construct a new school campus, its vision was to create a learning environment where the students’ natural environment was a visible part of their education; where the building would inspire the community about the possibilities of sustainable design. 7group facilitated an integrative process that helped the Chartwell family design their program and align around project performance goals to enmesh setting, curriculum and environment while remediating a former abandoned military base overlooking the Monterey Bay.

Having outgrown their existing office, King+King Architects chose to return to Syracuse, NY, where the firm originated in 1868. After hearing about the Near West-Side Initiative, King+King joined the movement to restore the downtown Syracuse community to its former glory as a business and social hub. An expanded 1913 farm equipment assembly plant and furniture warehouse in a marginalized neighborhood was chosen for renovation. From the start, the firm endeavored to create a legacy of sustainable design and contribute to community vitality with their new headquarters which earned LEED (NC v2.2) Platinum certification in April 2011.