Dean et. al., Thanks for the info. I was unaware that LEED was extending to existing buildings, but that is good to hear.
Who knows with Golisano/Arnold Halls what the options could have been, but the new building actually had one less classroom and smaller office spaces in exchange for "break out" rooms to promote more group work. It sounds like a good idea, but I think they made a few too many of those very small rooms that cannot be expanded to make larger rooms, which could have been incorporated into the design. Since this building was funded in part by the politician Golisano, I am leaning very far on the view that this was unnecessary building to have a new building named after someone with some power behind his name. Hartwick was itching to have a large donation to name the 2 newest residence halls, which were unnamed for about 10 years. Also, there were many "sustainable" practices that easily could have been made during this process, which were not, and lead to the students comments in disgust of a new building for the sake of sounding green. If efforts were made to recycle more than the minimum of Arnold Hall, or leave the trees infront of nearby halls, maybe people would have felt differently. -Andy Dean Koyanagi wrote: > Hi Andy, > > Just an FYI: There actually is an entire program of the US Green > Building Council for Existing Buildings- they call it LEED-EB. > (http://www.usgbc.org/LEED/eb/ ) There will also be a new LEED-NC > (that's new construction) rating system coming out shortly that > increases how points are weighed for energy. > > I agree that where possible, renovation is preferable, but since I don't > know if the previous building was able to be renovated to fit their > needs, I won't comment on Golisano Hall. I suspect the building was > going up for a specific set of needs, and that the LEED rating was never > a driver to build a 36,000 sq ft building. > > Dean > > Andy Goodell wrote: >> There was quite a fuss made about the Golisano Hall LEED building which >> is now finished at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. In order to make >> room on the terraced slope of Oyaron Hill, they took down the college's >> second oldest building. To meet a certain amount of LEED points, only >> 18% of the building needed to be recycled, and the rest was added to the >> landfills. >> >> The question that everyone had was: Is it more sustainable to add a $16 >> million LEED building while landfilling an old one, or put that money >> towards renovating the old building to become efficient. To my >> understanding, LEED certification cannot be applied to existing >> buildings, which is likely why that option was not seriously considered. >> >> In my opinion, LEED certifications need to be completely overhauled. If >> it's true that many of these actually use more power than conventional >> buildings, that confirms that this system is highly flawed. >> >> The problem is that most of these buildings are not going up for >> sustainability reasons, but for marketing. College like Hartwick can now >> say "Look! We are sustainable with a LEED building!" But I can assure >> you that Hartwick has little care in the way of sustainability. >> >> -Andy >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please > visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ > > RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: > [email protected] > http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins > free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org > > > -- Andy Goodell Assistant Director www.IthacaCarshare.org 607.277.3210 _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
