The University of Arizona Alumnus / Fall 2008

Greening a Desert Campus

by Will Gosner

On a late summer’s day, minutes after the eastward horizon has darkened, a cascade of rain briefly dims the streets, smearing the fine lines of a mesquite tree. Just as suddenly as the monsoon storm arrives and turns desert dust to mud, it leaves, restoring the full reign of the sun. Although the summer alternation between a beating downpour and a glaring hot sun may seem unpredictable, on the ground far below the clouds, preparations have already been made to welcome the rain and the sun.

At the corner of Euclid Avenue and University Boulevard, the University of Arizona Visitor Center is equipped with twin 2,000-gallon cisterns and six photovoltaic solar panels that capture precious rainwater and abundant sunshine. The UA moved into the building in 2005, and was soon approached by students interested in making it the first campus building to use solar energy. The project quickly grew — a complicated water-harvesting system was added, steered by a collaboration of students, faculty, staff, and the West University neighborhood.

With the help of a small army of supporters, including donated solar panels from Tucson Electric Power, the environmentally minded students, shovels in hand, completed the project in 2007. The students now are united under the name ECOalition and continue to implement projects aimed at making the UA campus a more sustainable, environmentally conscious place.

As the cisterns and solar panels took long hours and a concerted grass-roots effort to complete, their symbolic value was intended to supersede their water-saving and energy-giving functions. These projects were chosen for the Visitor Center, in fact, because it serves as a point of communication between the university, the community, and prospective students. It is an ideal place to send a strong message announcing the UA’s determination to be a leader in sustainable design.

Visitor Center Director Heather Lukach says the projects have served that ideal well. “We have the solar panel inverters here inside the Visitor Center so the public can see what energy the panels are producing,” she says. And the water-harvesting system gets interested visitors from both UA classes and community members. “It is a great little environment and teaching tool,” says Lukach.

Though the UA now builds new facilities to exceed environmental recommendations and frequently retrofits older buildings to come in line with current standards, it was not always the case. Associate Dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Coordinator of Preservation Studies R. Brooks Jeffery says this can be seen by walking from the campus’ core around Old Main to the ever-expanding outskirts.

“I think the U of A was always meant to be an oasis in the desert both intellectually and physically,” Jeffery says. “The heart of campus is a lush, beautifully landscaped environment,” with fields of green that guzzle valuable water. “In the late 20th century, there was a sense that we need to rethink this.” As a result, the newest frontiers of campus, and its marquee buildings like the Visitor Center, show a more sophisticated understanding of building in a desert environment.

Associate Director of Facilities Design and Construction Peter Dourlein says the university has often been at the forefront of architectural ideas for sustainability, even before sustainability was a buzz word and things like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification — one way of proving sound environmentally conscious design — were popular.

“Because we own all these buildings and we’re going to continue to use all these buildings, we care about how much it costs to heat and cool them. We’ve always cared about those things. So if someone asks about buildings that were built 20 years ago, ‘Are all your buildings LEED certified?’ No, they’re not, but are they sustainable? Yes, they are.”

Many of the sustainable measures the UA has implemented quietly go unnoticed, but have a large impact on reducing costs and decreasing the overall carbon footprint of the campus. From the enormous centralized cooling system to installing waterless urinals in old and new buildings, the UA is committed to reducing its impact on energy infrastructure and the environment. The benefits, says Dourlein, are lower operating costs, healthier work environments for students, faculty, and staff, and a clean conscience.

Apart from the unseen, standardized efforts to green the campus, in recent years several new buildings — all boldly unique in their architectural vision — have gained attention as models for sustainability.

Manuel Pacheco Integrated Learning Center

The State’s First Green Roof

One of the first major projects at the UA of the new millennium was the Manuel Pacheco Integrated Learning Center (ILC) completed in 2002 and located in the heart of the campus’ oasis.

After construction was finished and the big hole covered up, the grass of the mall that grew on top of the ILC became, says Dourlein, “the state’s really first green roof as far as public architecture goes.”

Apart from saving space, the benefits of a submerged building with a thick, multi-layered green roof are increased insulation and subsequently lower heating and cooling costs. Dourlein explains that “we save about 40 percent [of the energy] we would’ve lost in the heat loss or heat gain through walls and roof because it is underground.” With less need for energy-consuming heaters and air conditioners, the facility leaves a smaller carbon footprint behind.

The open courtyard of the ILC is another green feature that highlights a maxim of environentally friendly building practices: less is more. The landscaped dugout functions as both a meeting place for students hanging out before class and a surrogate lobby. But by virtue of being open to the sky, the space does not need to be air conditioned and maintained like a glassed-in, marble-floored interior space must be.

Dourlein says that “one of the most sustainable things you can do is not build, as long as you are meeting needs. There are a lot of resources that go into not just building a building, but maintaining it over its life.”

Meinel Optical Sciences Building Copper Skin

While the ILC largely hides underground, avoiding the punishing rays of the sun, the Meinel Optical Sciences Building proudly rises six stories high. Like the scientists and students inside that manipulate and explore the nature of light and vision, the building itself has a complex understanding of both the power and dangers of light.

architecture firm, the building won national awards from the American Institute of Architects for its merits in both style and sustainability. Large skylights harness the benevolent power of natural light, bringing it to all six stories of the building and creating a healthier work environment. The north side of the building is all angled, high-efficiency glass that avoids the direct impact of sunshine, minimizing heat gain.

Apart from the transparent façade, Meinel’s most visibly striking feature is the energy-efficient copper shell that wraps its remaining three sides. The covering is an example of sustainable design’s awareness of construction’s both short- and long-term impacts on the environment.

The copper skin, Dourlein points out, “is a regional material” which means that less energy is expended by not importing the materials from faraway foundries to Tucson. Not only that, but copper is “an enduring material, it’s a material you never have to paint,” Dourlein continues. “Again, that’s part of being sustainable. If you put something up and you have to keep painting it, you are using manpower and materials.”

The copper skin also plays an important role in managing the building’s temperature. Both the energy bill for air conditioning the building and, in turn, its environmental impact are reduced because the copper covering essentially puts the whole building in shadow even at high noon on a cloudless day.

Dourlein explains that “the copper skin is held away from the concrete mass of the building, so it actually shades the building.” Not only that, but, without any added electricity, the skin passively creates a breeze. “What I call a convection chimney [is formed] in between the mass of the building and the copper skin,” says Dourlein. “As the air heats up in there, it rises to the open top. Hot air goes out, and new air comes in at the bottom. It is sort of a constant circulation of air that serves as a cooling effect on the mass of the building.”

College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture expansion (CALA)

Mimicking a Desert Landscape

The most recent addition to the UA’s sustainability inclined building arsenal is not a seamless synthesis of new environmentally sound techniques, but a rough-edged, exposed facility that functions as both a model and constantly evolving teaching facility.

The CALA building confronts the benefactor of sustainable design measures — the environment — right at its doorstep. Along the south side of the building, a series of landscaped sections are designed to mimic the range of desert habitats from rocky upper canyon to a soggy riparian pond, home to native desert fish. The walkways leading to and from the building meld with a more circuitous path that guides the visitor into the transitional zone between constructed human creations to cultivated natural ones. The juxtaposition feels natural in just the way that the college teaches their students that inspiring, modern design must naturally take into account the environmental impact of a building.

Almost every aspect of the CALA building shows students and passersby alike that architeture can and should be integrated with a healthy landscape. The lush desert plantings are fed during rainy periods by a giant 12,000-gallon cistern filled by roof runoff and condensation from the building’s cooling systems. Like Meinel, the CALA building has a large copper screen on the south side, but true to form, it will not remain austerely bare, but eventually will be covered by shade-giving, living vines.

In the near future, according to Associate Dean Jeffery, CALA will install a green roof atop the new building, with solar panels as well as ample space for students to carry out hands-on experiments testing landscaping ideas.

“We have integrated landscape architecture with architecture in order to set a precedent for the students,” says Jeffery. “In terms of green and sustainability, you cannot separate out the disciplines. It is one mode of thinking.”

Inside, students work in high-ceilinged studios with exposed electrical, plumbing, and heating and cooling systems as they train to become the standard-bearers for a new generation of environmentally minded, conceptually adventurous architects and landscape architects. They build intricate, to-scale models of projects, and metal and wood project scraps are carefully kept separate and diligently recycled. Down to the recycled-glass carpets, the facility is a constant reminder of its mission statement. Jeffery concludes, “We are a teaching facility. Everything should be a model of what we preach. It’s all about practicing what you preach.”

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