First Green Globes certification given to new University of North Carolina housing facility

The Green Building Initiative (GBI) announced that the University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s Belk Hall, a student housing facility for the college’s upper division students, is the first building certified under the 2013 Green Globes for New Construction (NC), according to GBI president Jerry Yudelson.

Belk Hall achieved 507 out of 918 available points for a score of 55%, which is equivalent to a 2 Green Globes rating.

“The current Green Globes for New Construction program very effectively captures essential sustainable components of a building project that ultimately result in an optimized life cycle cost and a ‘cradle-to-gate approach’ for evaluating building materials’ environmental impacts,” Yudelson said. “Belk Hall adopted many of these critical design elements and best practices, resulting in a high performance building with a long sustainable future.”

Specifically, the Belk Hall building project incorporated, in a very substantive manner, key criteria in the Green Globes NC Materials and Resources section, including current and cutting-edge materials performance criteria, with optional paths for a prescriptive approach dealing with a material’s environmental characteristics.

The updated Green Globes NC also includes significant prescriptive criteria related to protection of the building envelope from the elements, and also several current “best practices” building management criteria. Besides earning the maximum credit in the life cycle assessment performance path for core and shell materials, Belk Hall’s design team also developed a Building Life Service Plan, which sets the stage to optimize the entire building life cycle, ultimately assisting the building’s future managers in maintaining and improving sustainability over time.

“An in-person review [by the Green Globes Assessor] of the actual building and systems is helpful in determining whether the strategies we described in our submittal have been implemented successfully,” architect and project manager Tracy Randazzo, AIA, of Clark Nexsen Architecture & Engineering, Charlotte, said. “We want the end product to be the best it can be.”

Finally, UNC incorporated the vast majority of “best practice” prescriptive design criteria related to building protection associated with the roof, wall cladding and foundation. “The UNC – Charlotte team clearly demonstrated their commitment to environmental excellence through their efforts in this area, as well as stellar performance in energy and water efficiency,” Yudelson said.

Insulated metal panels, or IMPs, have been a popular exterior wall cladding choice for more than 30 years. These sandwich panels are composed of liquid insulating foam, such as polyurethane, injected between two aluminum or steel metal face panels to form a solid, monolithic unit. The result is a lightweight, highly insulated (R-14 to R-30, depending on the thickness of the panel) exterior clad...

| Aug 11, 2010

AIA Course: Enclosure strategies for better buildings

Sustainability and energy efficiency depend not only on the overall design but also on the building's enclosure system. Whether it's via better air-infiltration control, thermal insulation, and moisture control, or more advanced strategies such as active façades with automated shading and venting or novel enclosure types such as double walls, Building Teams are delivering more efficient, better performing, and healthier building enclosures.

| Aug 11, 2010

Glass Wall Systems Open Up Closed Spaces

Sectioning off large open spaces without making everything feel closed off was the challenge faced by two very different projects—one an upscale food market in Napa Valley, the other a corporate office in Southern California. Movable glass wall systems proved to be the solution in both projects.

| Aug 11, 2010

Tall ICF Walls: 9 Building Tips from the Experts

Insulating concrete forms have a long history of success in low-rise buildings, but now Building Teams are specifying ICFs for mid- and high-rise structures—more than 100 feet. ICF walls can be used for tall unsupported walls (for, say, movie theaters and big-box stores) and for multistory, load-bearing walls (for hotels, multifamily residential buildings, and student residence halls).

| Aug 11, 2010

Great Solutions: Products

14. Mod Pod A Nod to Flex Biz Designed by the British firm Tate + Hindle, the OfficePOD is a flexible office space that can be installed, well, just about anywhere, indoors or out. The self-contained modular units measure about seven feet square and are designed to serve as dedicated space for employees who work from home or other remote locations.

Currently Reading

First Green Globes certification given to new University of North Carolina housing facility

Tags

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

| Aug 11, 2010

Most Popular Content

Magazine Subscription

Get our Newsletters

Follow BD+C: