GREENBRIDGE, A Building That Gives Back to the Environment

One very vision­ary archi­tect named William McDonough, how­ever, has taken an approach directly con­trary to these prac­tices, evolv­ing and imple­ment­ing prin­ci­ples that are not only envi­ron­men­tally safe but which actu­ally con­tribute to sus­tain­ing life. “How sophis­ti­cated are human design­ers?” McDonough poses. “Think about a tree. How many human design­ers can go out and put some­thing in the ground that they’ve designed that starts mak­ing oxy­gen, dis­tills water, pro­vides habi­tat for hun­dreds of species, builds soil, uses solar energy as fuel and self-replicates? And how many build­ings that you know of have made oxy­gen lately? What we’re talk­ing about is the idea of a build­ing like a tree. It could actu­ally happen.”

McDonough’s phi­los­o­phy is expressed fully in his 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, coau­thored with Michael Braungart. The Cradle to CradleSM frame­work encour­ages a thor­ough under­stand­ing of what mate­ri­als are, how they behave, whether they are tech­ni­cal or bio­log­i­cal nutri­ents, and how they can be recy­cled and up-cycled (up-cycling is the use of waste mate­ri­als to pro­vide use­ful prod­ucts). In the nat­ural world, the sun con­tin­u­ally gen­er­ates new growth and feeds liv­ing sys­tems. One organism’s waste is food for another—waste equals food. Under Cradle to Cradle think­ing, the goal is for every­thing to con­tribute pos­i­tively to soci­ety, the econ­omy and the environment.

It’s a grand vision, no doubt. But is it pos­si­ble to put into practice?

Welcome to Greenbridge

A com­pany called Greenbridge Development has taken McDonough’s vision and put it very much into prac­tice. Their first ven­ture, a com­plex of lux­ury con­do­mini­ums and com­mer­cial spaces, is now being built in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and William McDonough and his com­pany are the lead design archi­tects. Greenbridge will offer 98 con­do­minium res­i­dences at var­i­ous price points, 35,000 square feet of retail, and under­ground park­ing through­out a 216,850-square-foot com­plex on a 54,724-square-foot plot in Chapel Hill’s his­toric Northside neighborhood.

“William McDonough + Partners’ design think­ing is inspired by the Cradle to Cradle frame­work; this shapes the approach to all of our archi­tec­ture and com­mu­nity design projects,” says Mark Rylander, archi­tect with McDonough + Partners. “From the out­set, the Greenbridge devel­op­ers sup­ported our effort to think about the project as a sys­tem and find ways to explore eco-effective solu­tions in every aspect of the project, from the build­ing form to energy to materials.”

Building Materials

Yes, they are really doing it. From the start, the Greenbridge devel­op­ers have com­mit­ted to the uti­liza­tion of envi­ron­men­tally safe mate­ri­als. “Wherever pos­si­ble, we are seek­ing to spec­ify Cradle to Cradle cer­ti­fied prod­ucts and other prod­ucts and mate­ri­als that are health­ier and safer than con­ven­tional alter­na­tives,” says Jose Atienza, award-winning designer with William McDonough + Partners.

The design team is fol­low­ing the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System, a vol­un­tary, consensus-based national stan­dard for devel­op­ing high-performance, sus­tain­able build­ings that can restore the nat­ural envi­ron­ment and encour­age use of local labor and mate­r­ial resources. Based on well-founded sci­en­tific stan­dards, LEED empha­sizes state-of-the-art strate­gies for sus­tain­able site devel­op­ment, water sav­ings, energy effi­ciency, mate­ri­als selec­tion and indoor envi­ron­men­tal qual­ity.
All fin­ish­ing wood at Greenbridge will be cer­ti­fied by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and no harm­ful mate­ri­als such as MDF (medium-density fiber­board) or formalde­hyde will be used at all. Hardwoods will also   be from sal­vaged and reclaimed woods. Local Mt. Airy (North Carolina) and Virginia gran­ites will be used. Many sur­faces will be cov­ered with a hard-wearing, water­proof, fully recy­cled and recy­clable sur­fac­ing mate­r­ial known as TEFOR. All the car­pets will be of nat­ural renew­able wool, linen and cot­ton. Paints used will be free of volatile organic compounds.

Environmentally Contributive Operation

Of course, once the build­ing is com­pleted, its friendly inter­ac­tion with the envi­ron­ment is key.

The roof of the build­ing will be uti­lized for func­tional as well as aes­thetic pur­poses, play­ing host to beau­ti­ful land­scaped gar­dens. Besides being attrac­tive, these gar­dens will cre­ate oxy­gen, har­vest rain­wa­ter for reuse, and dimin­ish rain­wa­ter runoff to storm drains. Storm water will be cap­tured by spe­cial water reten­tion lay­ers installed beneath the soil of the plant­i­ngs. Each layer will be made of egg-crate-shaped mate­r­ial that can hold up to two inches of rain before over­flow into the roof drains. This sim­ple tech­nique will keep rain­wa­ter in reserve beneath the soil, mak­ing it avail­able to plants through a wick­ing process when the sur­face soil is dry.

Collecting rain­wa­ter will also off­set depen­dence on city water sup­plies. In addi­tion to pre­vent­ing runoff and being used to water the gar­dens, it will also pos­si­bly be used to flush toi­lets in pub­lic spaces.

Decisions on plumb­ing sys­tems through-out the build­ing are also being guided by the goal of max­i­mum water con­ser­va­tion. Water-saving plumb­ing fix­tures and appli­ances and waste­water reuse will help to reduce the building’s potable water con­sump­tion by more than 50 per­cent com­pared to a sim­i­lar size building.

Greenbridge will use 35 per­cent less energy than a sim­i­lar build­ing designed to National Energy Code require­ments, and will pro­vide a 65 per­cent reduc­tion in sum­mer peak demand. In addi­tion, 5 per­cent of the building’s base elec­tri­cal load will be gen­er­ated by onsite solar power.

The build­ing will uti­lize a cen­tral air fil­tra­tion sys­tem that will pull in fresh air from the structure’s high­est point and fil­ter 85 per­cent of par­tic­u­lates before pro­vid­ing each apart­ment with fresh fil­tered air. Working in tan­dem with the building’s geot­her­mal heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tem, the air will be heated and humid­i­fied dur­ing cold weather and cooled and dehu­mid­i­fied dur­ing warm weather.

A sin­gle com­put­er­ized sys­tem will coor­di­nate con­trols for heat­ing, ven­ti­la­tion, air con­di­tion­ing, light­ing, secu­rity and other build­ing sys­tems. It will auto­mat­i­cally alert main­te­nance per­son­nel when required.

Social Interaction

The build­ing is designed to mesh not only with the envi­ron­ment but with soci­ety as well. “At Greenbridge, the devel­op­ers were very con­scious of this project’s poten­tial as a regional cat­a­lyst and exam­ple, which meant that where it is located—within exist­ing infrastructure—was an impor­tant dri­ver, and one that links to all of these issues,” says Rylander. “Tremendous eco­nomic, social and envi­ron­men­tal impacts flow from where the build­ing is: whether it allows and encour­ages walk­ing, cycling and tran­sit use, and how close it is to ser­vices, jobs, schools and more. Greenbridge tack­led this issue aggressively.”

Greenbridge Developments is com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing “smart growth” prin­ci­ples of revi­tal­iz­ing town cen­ters, rather than gob­bling up farms and forest­lands and con­tribut­ing to urban sprawl. Their inten­tion is to place build­ings close to mass tran­sit sys­tems and urban infra­struc­ture. Residents are able to park their cars, opt­ing to take the bus, walk or ride bicy­cles as an alter­nate mode of trans­porta­tion.
The Greenbridge site loca­tion was cho­sen for both its prac­ti­cal qual­i­ties and poten­tial pos­si­bil­i­ties. Practically, the cur­rent infra­struc­ture has water, sewer, tele­phone, power, paved roads and three bus stops, and is cen­trally located between the main streets of Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

The neigh­bor­hood in which the site is located is expe­ri­enc­ing an eco­nomic revi­tal­iza­tion, and devel­op­ing this site will greatly add to the momen­tum. This poten­tial is rec­og­nized by the city, as the Greenbridge site is located within the “oppor­tu­nity zone” as cre­ated for Chapel Hill’s down­town small area plan.

Historically the site dates back to a time when it was the hub of a vibrant and sus­tain­able com­mu­nity. The new Greenbridge build­ing will bridge the neighborhood’s future to its past, and its planned large plaza will become a town gath­er­ing place for years to come.

Other Projects

The design ser­vices of William McDonough + Partners have also been retained for a com­mer­cial office build­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter called Boutique JACOB in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, incor­po­rat­ing both the diver­sity and the rich­ness of Montreal and the Quebec region. The firm is also par­tic­i­pat­ing in Make It Right, a non-profit project ded­i­cated to build­ing 150 homes in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward. The project serves as a cat­a­lyst for rede­vel­op­ment by build­ing a neigh­bor­hood com­prised of safe and healthy homes that are inspired by Cradle to Cradle thinking.