News
Brutalist Architecture Goes Green
October 27, 2010
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| Going to class in Walter Netsch's brutalist architecture buildings could be, well, brutal before University of Illinois at Chicago started its sustainability program. USGBC toured the campus last night ot see the changes. GC Design Organization tore out everything except the columns and installed non-tinted windows, bringing Grant,Lincoln, and Douglass Halls up to LEED Gold. The buildings also share a geothermal heating and cooling system, which flows through the soffits as Design Org.'s Jeffrey Lewis shows us here. | |
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| Invisible to the USGBC tourists were the solar and white roofs. The solar panels have generated 57M kWh in the last nine months, accounting for almost 10% of the buildings' energy use. Students also enjoy oases such as this one within the building, utilizing recycled furniture and flooring. Total cost of the renovations was about $13.7M and came out of student fees. Total cost of seeing how many full contact study sessions it will take to make it look like it did pre-renovation: Priceless. |
