Contact Us
News

Hitchcock's Innovative LEED Point

Chicago
Hitchcock's Innovative LEED Point
We're very good at saying when building's achieve LEED status but realized we knew little of what that meant. Solution: Visit the nation's first LEED-Silver hospital, Rush University Hospital. We asked the building's landscape architects Hitchcock Design Group about its methods. Thus we were introduced to . . .below-grade planters?
 
Hitchcock's Geoff Roehll and Jackie Loewe

Hitchcock's Geoff Roehll (here with colleague Jackie Loewe) created streetside planters lowered into the ground, rather than raised above, so dust and debris flow through the grate into  specially mixed soil acting as a filter. With especially hearty plants, the planters are irrigated almost entirely through rainwater, or water condensed off the building chillers and piped in.

 
Hitchcock's Geoff Roehll and Jackie Loewe

A more traditional contribution is the green roof, this one built over a parking garage and underground tunnel system big enough for multiple semis to turn around; it allows medical supplies to be delivered while keeping the street free for emergency vehicles. The green roof also gives patients a place to relax after procedures. Hitchcock designed another, which will be installed on the sixth floor of the Atrium Building as it is constructed.