University of Iowa College of Public Health

Transcription

With any project or new building that we do on campus, we require LEED certification to the silver level. That's Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design. It's a measuring stick for sustainability, for design in green ways, recognized around the world, throughout the nation. All of our buildings, since we instituted that program, have been reaching the LEED Silver as a minimum. In fact, our energy efficiency standards for our campus take the default for LEED certification usually into the Gold category. But we have yet to achieve LEED Platinum, which is the highest level of certification, for any academic building on campus. The College of Public Health becomes the second building on our campus that has reached LEED Platinum, our data center on the Oakdale campus was the first, but it is more difficult for a standard office classroom building to reach that highest level of LEED certification. It has meaning on several levels. First, it showcases the university's commitment to sustainability and good stewardship of energy and the environment. Second, the kinds of commitments that you make in construction a building that gets LEED certification are absolutely at the core of our values and mission as the College of Public Health. LEED is a point-based system. As you choose to do things within the design, both on the site, the buildings, the building systems, that are energy efficient or good for the occupants in the building, you receive points that take you up the ladder from LEED certification to silver to gold to platinum. We do no do it for symbolic reasons. We didn't reach LEED platinum on the College of Public Health building because we aimed for getting LEED platinum for that sake. We look at it as a return on investment. It's a cost of ownership, total cost of ownership for the buildings that we occupy that last the lifetime of these buildings that we expect to be on this campus for 50-100 years. Every year, year over year, these energy efficient methods we use and design pay off. We look at each of those methods when we're designing the building, so we don't look at it as just spending money, but rather investing in doing the wise thing and the socially responsible thing. A lot of LEED is infrastructure, so it's invisible. The way you set up the plumbing, the waste removal, the construction of the building, the recycling of the materials -- the extra materials from construction -- these are things that you don't necessarily see. The part that's exciting for me is that's very much like public health. Public health is a lot of infrastructure; when it works, it's invisible. The College of Public Health diverted 97% of the construction waste away from the landfill. It's an extremely high percentage and through the LEED program, we were rewarded for that as well. Within the building itself, you're not necessarily getting points for the structure, but you do get points for the materials that are constructed as a part the project, keeping them local, using recycled goods, using recycled woods and certified woods that the LEED program recognize as renewable. You're going to put up 4 walls and a roof no matter what. If you can put up 4 walls and a roof and do it in a way that contributes to the well being of the environment, that's really important. That's what LEED is about, it's not just a badge that you wear, it's a commitment that you make that's enduring across the life of the building. LEED also looks at what is good for the people that come into that building; natural daylight, views of the outside are very important. This building maximizes those opportunities, and in addition, offers some very dramatic views of the campus, aiming the building and its atrium back toward the pentacrest and the old capitol dome. My favorite part of the building is the light and the central staircase. This is a building that you come into and it invites you to walk. The site itself is part of a campus pathway that connects the east side of our campus across the Iowa River to the west side of the campus, the medical campus. This building becomes and interesting and important link, and in fact, very fitting for the CoPH, which is the college that probably most readily connects the med campus to our undergraduate programs. This site serves as a physical link and a symbolic link.