In Silver Spring, Maryland, the 135,000 square foot building pushes the boundaries of a net-zero building. With its completion in 2018, the building was built in collaboration with United Therapeutics, a biotech company, and Whiting-Turner Contracting.
With the push for mitigating carbon emissions and improving sustainability efforts for new architectural projects, Unisphere approaches the task by implementing a mixture of technologies to have the building become fully sustainable.
Unisphere. Video © EwingCole
According to Marlene Cimons of Quartz, Unisphere consists of "thousands of devices feeding into a powerful computer "nerve center" that tracks energy use and coordinates heating, cooling, and other operations."A few examples of sustainability efforts are the windows that automatically darken when temperatures outside increase and the concrete labyrinth 12 feet underneath the building that acts as a passive heating and cooling system.
According to Cimons, the project did face its fair share of obstacles during construction. However, in the end, the building has become a beacon for the growing possibilities of net-zero construction. During the project's initial phases Martine Rothblatt, head of United Therapeautics, was keen on creating a net-zero building and creating a truly sustainable building.
Although many would question the cost of creating a net-zero building. Cimons shares insight from Thomas Kaufman, director of corporate real estate for United Therapeutics, "the price wasn't much more than some of the company's earlier buildings."
When it comes to using design as a way to battle climate change, corporations can learn from Rothblatt and her persistence. Kaufman shares with Cimons, "She felt very strongly that you cannot achieve net-zero as an afterthought. It has to be a mandate at the beginning that drives every single decision.”
3 Comments
without links to 3rd party verified data one should be suspicious of such claims. the linked article reads like a press release. it provides no useful information on how this works in practice nor what tradeoffs are required. natural daylight isn't an innovative idea nor a particularly helpful guideline for making this work, though its mostly what the article speaks about.
anyone can have a netzero office building. it'll just be cold in winter and dark at night. and you charge your laptop at home after work. the challenge is in the details of how you balance that basic state against user preferences.
I don’t see any solar panels ... they must be capturing and burning methane from all the bullshit PR.
google Martine Rothblatt. I posted first, but after reading about her I've no doubt there is massive Adam Neumann-scale BS here.
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