We are pleased to announce that two PAYETTE projects received awards during the 2019 USGBC Green Building Showcase event in Boston last week. The projects include the New Science Center at Amherst College and the Community Living Center at Chelsea Soldiers’ Home.
The US Green Building Council Massachusetts Chapter is a Boston-based non-profit looking to advance the sustainability of the built environment. Each year, they put on the Green Building Showcase (GBS) to celebrate industry success and. At GBS ‘19, community members celebrate the best efforts, designs, and products in the Commonwealth. Attendees included architects, engineers, contractors, developers, owners, facility managers, building users, lenders, suppliers and others who play a role in designing, operating and constructing the built environment.
Amherst College | New Science Center
Innovation and People’s Choice Green Building Market Leader Award
The Amherst College New Science Center is a high intensity laboratory with one of the lowest energy footprints of its typology. The building employs several strategies contributing to energy efficiency including a high-performance envelope, abundant natural light, low-energy HVAC chilled beams, fan-coil distribution systems, optimized fume hood control strategies, demand control ventilation including laboratory spaces, high performance heat recovery with indirect evaporative cooling, and freezer heat recovery for domestic hot water. Indirect-direct evaporative cooling reduces the heating and cooling needed for the ventilation system to reduce peak loads in the laboratories. High performance triple-pane glazing, curtainwall and façade systems implement thermal breaks. Opaque, natural ventilation panels were used in the faculty offices to provide natural ventilation while maintaining thermal integrity of the triple-pane windows. The Commons’ roof monitors integrate architectural and mechanical elements that provide an overall comfort conditioning solution: chilled beams, radiant slabs, acoustic baffles and a photovoltaic array to generate onsite power.
The Amherst College New Science Center took home both the Innovation Award and the People’s Choice Green Building Market Leader Award. For the Innovation Award the jury stated:
The New Science Center at Amherst College is the award winner for Innovation category due to the significant achievement in energy efficiency in a lab building, and the focused, creative approach to the thermal design of the building. Although sporting a significant glass wall, facing west, this wall is triple-paned thermally broken curtainwall system, is shielded by the more private west-reaching wings of the building, and it fronts the main circulation space which is impeccably designed for the support and access of the people and the control and use of airflow.
Alex Wilson, Tristen Roberts, and Jodi Smits Anderson, Judges
DCAMM Chelsea Soldiers’ Home | Community Living Center
Health and Wellness Market Leader Award
Located atop Chelsea’s iconic Powder Horn Hill, the Community Living Center is a long–term care facility for Massachusetts’ veterans that creates a dramatic new urban landmark capped by its solar canopy and reaching outward to frame the horizon. Designed to harness panoramic views of downtown Boston and the harbor, the transformative new facility will have 154 private rooms organized around shared community spaces and surrounded by generous courtyards.
The net zero hospital uses a performance-based approach to the building and systems design resulting in a building that is designed to use 63% less energy than a typical facility utilizing geothermal heating and cooling, extensive natural ventilation and a 0.5 megawatt rooftop–mounted solar array to meet state and federal fossil fuel reduction targets.
The design of this facility, with excellent energy performance, natural ventilation, and connection to views and community spaces, is an exemplar of care for our veterans
Tristan Roberts, Bill Walsh, and Anne Hicks Harney, Judges
We are honored to have been presented with these awards. Congrats to the rest of the award recipients!
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.