Web Exclusive: Platinum-plated pride

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On the roof, photovoltaic panels convert the sun’s rays into electricity. Inside, waterless toilets turn human waste into usable compost. And 300 feet below the surface, geothermal wells use the Earth’s constant temperature for sustainable heating and cooling.
The building of the future? Hardly. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Philip Merrill Environmental Center in Maryland was designed more than 10 years ago.
But despite its age, the building — the first in the world to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s platinum rating on its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design scale — is still hailed as a model of sustainability.
“It continues to hold up today,” said Greg Mella of the Washington, D.C.-based design firm SmithGroup, which served as architect and engineer during the building’s construction. “Of all the buildings I’ve worked on since then, it’s probably still one of the best examples of how passive design and integrated design contribute to a pretty sophisticated building.
“Everywhere you look in that project, from the closets to the lobby, you can really see a lot of those very straightforward, sustainable strategies.”
When the center was designed in 1997, green building was still a new concept, Mella said, making for an uphill battle as the foundation sought environmentally sound materials.
“There were numerous challenges because, really, there hadn’t been any kind of commercial office buildings that were really that green,” he said. “It was before anyone really knew LEED, before it was kind of a household name.”
LEED wasn’t launched by the USGBC until August 1998. Although the bay foundation had been planning a green building before LEED came into the picture, having the LEED scale as a model helped identify specific goals for construction, said Mary Tod Winchester, vice president of administration and operations at the foundation.
“When you think about green,” she said, “you can go off in all directions, and LEED provided the road map to stay focused.”
Winchester said building the world’s first LEED platinum building was an important way for the group to confirm its commitment to the environment.
“By being the first,” she said, “we were able to convince so many business leaders, so many government leaders that it’s something anyone is able to do. And having a facility like this on the East Coast has really helped push the movement.”
The Merrill Center, paid for by a donation from then-board member Philip Merrill, cost $7.2 million, or $197 per square foot, compared to an average cost of about $150 per square foot to build a nongreen office building, Winchester said. Green materials were more expensive in the late 1990s, she said, because the marketplace had yet to be transformed by the green-building movement.
“Economically, now it makes sense, even though it cost us a premium,” she said.
Despite the center’s expensive price tag, in some ways, she said, the building covered the cost since it was occupied in 2000. For example, its solar-powered, hot-water heaters paid for themselves 18 months, while the geothermal wells had a payback period of just more than five years.
“What we ask people to think about is not just the cost savings but the savings on the environment,” Winchester said. “The paybacks are more than in dollars.”
About 8,000 people tour the building each year. Winchester said the visitors include school children, contractors and people interested in sustainable building.
“A lot of the contractors who want to be green don’t know how to put it all together,” she said. “Here, they can see what it looks like.”
Some of the design principles incorporated into the building were included to educate potential tour groups, Winchester said.
“As a nonprofit, we have no need for hardwood floors, but we wanted to show people you can have a beautiful floor and still be green,” she said, noting that the hardwood floors in the building are made from rapidly renewable bamboo. “We wanted people to walk in and go, ‘I could do that!’ What we wanted was for any person, no matter what their background, to leave this building with one idea.”