Printer-Friendly

Old Buildings: The New Green 

Historic preservationists are not the only ones who are passionate about preserving old buildings. Today’s green designers are turning old building retrofits into opportunities to introduce better approaches to reducing energy, water, and waste over time, making those buildings more comfortable and more efficient. These retrofits demand that architects and engineers be creative in adapting existing space to their clients’ needs.

  Everything old is new again
Most old buildings are not historic—but each one has value based on the material it contains, its functional design, its workmanship, and all other costs that went into building it.

Adaptive re-use and modernization projects capitalize on opportunities to make best use of existing buildings. These projects have taken on new significance in a troubled economy, as re-using existing buildings typically requires fewer upfront dollars than new building construction.

Now more than ever, owners recognize that consigning an old building to the wrecking ball is literally throwing away a quantifiable and valuable asset. The foundations and footings of the buildings are already there. The slabs and walls are already there. And some classic features of certain old buildings offer opportunities to help save energy. For example, higher ceilings make it easier to install efficient under-floor airflow systems; existing architectural shading can deflect exterior heat; and older building materials like stone, brick, and concrete can help control indoor temperatures.

An expanded awareness of these opportunities—and new federal and local mandates to incorporate green building features—is helping to define a new agenda for retaining existing buildings and for implementing technologies that reduce the costs of energy and water use, air filtration and improve illumination and communication networks.

  A first for New York City
In the early 1990s, Cosentini Associates, a Tetra Tech company, worked on New York City’s first large commercial office building rehab project, which set the standard for this type of retrofit.

The building was 380 Madison Avenue, an 840,000 square-foot, 1960s structure. It could no longer circulate air efficiently or provide sufficient energy for the emergence of computers in the workplace. The building also needed its fire safety systems upgraded.

“The building was a perfect candidate to be rehabilitated—its useful life was exceeded and the technology had changed,” said Douglas Mass, PE, LEED AP, president of Cosentini Associates. “But the building couldn’t shut down since the tenants’ leases remained intact.” As such, Cosentini phased the installation of 380 Madison’s exterior recladding and its state-of-the-art MEP and fire safety systems over two years so that tenants could continue working in the facility.

“A lot of weekends involved removing the old glass inside of the new high efficiency curtain wall that was bolted on the outside,” Mr. Mass recalled. The new windows reduced the cost of heating and cooling and allowed much better control of indoor conditions.

In the building’s central core, the Cosentini team created a vertical highway to run all of the new technology for a fiber optic communication network, power, and adequate cooling capacity. These enhancements now provide tenants the flexibility to grow technologically as their needs grow.

Success at 380 Madison Avenue paved the way for larger and more technically challenging modernization projects in New York City:

• 1095 Avenue of the Americas, a 1.3 million square-foot 50-story building with a new central chilled water plant and variable air volume handling systems.
• 545 Madison Avenue, a LEED Gold-targeted project involving a 150,00 square-foot office building, which was gutted down to its structure to install a new mechanical and electrical infrastructure and an HVAC system that improves indoor air quality and occupant comfort.
• The Empire State Building, in which one floor secured a LEED Platinum rating. Built in 1930, New York’s most iconic structure had no HVAC system to support this ambitious challenge. Ceiling heights, however, made it possible to raise the floor and install an under-floor airflow system. The demand/control ventilation saves energy by measuring CO₂ and varying the cooling based on the volume of outside air coming in.

  Not just for the urban core
In dense urban markets, people have been modernizing old buildings for years. But this approach is now taking building steam in the suburbs, with private and public-sector owners alike.

In Andover, MA, about 25 miles north of Boston, Cosentini helped make a 40-year-old, 240,000 square-foot, one-story, Internal Revenue Service facility more energy efficient and a much more invigorating work environment. “It was one giant box,” said Bob Leber, PE, LEED AP, executive vice president of Cosentini at its Cambridge, MA, office. “Not much natural light penetrated the space.”

To improve on that, the project team replaced the old exterior glazing and then crafted interior courtyards that provided additional natural light and also gave users a much-needed sense of orientation. To make the space feel broken up and still meet goals for energy savings, the architect proposed a novel ceiling configuration. Cosentini’s computational fluid dynamics model mapped air temperatures and velocity to demonstrate that the design would work.

Today, employees enjoy a healthier interior environment that Mr. Leber says can generate higher employee productivity—including lower absenteeism, less turnover, and higher quantity and quality of work.

  Green design in the Evergreen State
In the Pacific Northwest, state and local governments are showing leadership in the community by passing legislation that promotes sustainability and carbon reduction. They’re also demonstrating their commitment to sustainability goals by updating their own facilities by way of green retrofit.

“We’re building fewer new facilities and renovating more,” said Mark Nakatani, AIA, LEED AP, vice president and chief architect in Tetra Tech’s Seattle, WA, office. “As real estate becomes more scarce and costly—and as the public dollar shrinks—municipal clients have accepted the less-than-perfect nature of retrofit projects. They know that facility needs change and designing a facility for flexibility and resource efficiency is the best way to maintain the investment.”

Metro Transit, a division of King County Department of Transportation serving Seattle and metropolitan King County, operates under the county’s Green Building Initiative, which promotes all county facilities to obtain the “highest LEED certification level achievable that is cost-effective.”

Metro Transit’s Ryerson Base Expansion project involves staging for more than 100 transit vehicles of varying sizes. Tetra Tech helped plan the building when it was constructed in the 1980s and is now leading the design to double its service capacity and secure a LEED Silver rating. The phased project includes renovation and new construction. Rather than using traditional cast-in-place concrete, this project is using recycled steel, which provides greater flexibility in the design and in achieving sustainability goals.

  Federal facilities go green
Re-use has been a common strategy for the military, whose branches have always been cost conscious and sought ways to do more with less. The U.S. Department of Defense’s increasing focus on sustainability and energy management are likely to lead to additional modernization of older facilities.

For military clients seeking new life for existing facilities, Tetra Tech has converted old motor pools into tank maintenance shops and renovated warehouses to serve as the Base Exchanges. At Whidbey Naval Air Station in Puget Sound, Tetra Tech transformed 60-year-old barracks into apartment-style housing.

New mandates will continue to drive DoD agencies toward green building solutions. The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers require a LEED Silver rating for all new construction projects. The U.S. Air Force has adopted LEED Silver effective FY10.

  Adaptive re-use is the answer
Old buildings are the new green. Yet owners and other stakeholders of old buildings must first ask themselves these questions: Can they modernize the old buildings cost-effectively? Can they tap into their inherent benefits? Can they sustain the investment? Given the enormous advances in energy-efficient technologies, building materials, and communications, the answer to all three questions is more often than not yes. And in a troubled economy, adaptive re-use projects are expected to continue to pick up speed.

“The most sustainable thing we can do is work with what we have,” Mr. Nakatani quipped. Hence, architects and engineers must identify the optimum mix of replacing and upgrading infrastructure with imaginative design to make old buildings serve their new role. A conceptual break with ‘new is better’ has finally arrived.

For more information on green building retrofits and adaptive re-use, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .