Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory Opens One Of The Greenest Buildings In The World:
Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, a leader in sustainable building practices, has just opened one of the greenest structures in the world. (And we’re not just talking in terms of plants!) The Center for Sustainable Landscapes, the conservatory’s new education and research facility, aims to be the first building to achieve Living Building Challenge (net-zero water, net-zero energy), LEED Platinum, and Sustainable Sites Initiative certification. The goal, says Phipps’ marketing and communications manager Liz Fetchin, at a recent presentation in New York City: to create a building that “literally has as much impact on the environment as a flower.” Read more.
The CSL looks, appropriately, like a modern greenhouse. In order to comply with Living Building Challenge guidelines, issued by the International Living Future Institute, Pittsburgh-based Design Alliance Architects, have constructed a sleek glass fishbowl, with a rectangular glass extension that features salvaged wood siding. Recycled steel provides structural support, and local flora populate both the CSL’s grounds and its interiors.
And not only is it pretty, but this 24,350-square-foot structure also produces all its own renewable power, thanks to the use of solar panels, geothermal wells, and a wind turbine, as well as passive cooling, heating, and lighting methods. The CSL also features a green roof, a lagoon, rain gardens, permeable paved surfaces, constructed wetlands, and a water distillation system—and its evolving, sustainable landscape has nine different native plant communities that will provide habitat for wildlife and be irrigated with water collected on site.
With the CSL, and with its many other commitments to sustainable design and living, Phipps is turning the idea of the botanic garden on its head. “Greenhouses and botanic gardens are, historically, not green at all,” says Richard Piacentini, Phipps’ executive director. “You have these single-planed glass buildings meant to grow tropical plants in non-tropical environments. The goal was to conquer nature.” But threats such as global warming have given gardens like Phipps incentive to work with, rather than against, nature. “It’s all about beauty and connecting people to nature by highlighting vital relationships between ourselves, plants, health, and the planet.” says Piacentini. “The CSL is the ultimate expression of our systems‐based way of thinking and acting, to blur the lines between the built and natural environments.”
Photos: Alexander Denmarsh Photography
Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, a leader in sustainable building practices, has just opened one of the greenest structures in the world. (And we’re not just talking in terms of plants!) The Center for Sustainable Landscapes, the conservatory’s new education and research facility, aims to be the first building to achieve Living Building Challenge (net-zero water, net-zero energy), LEED Platinum, and Sustainable Sites Initiative certification. The goal, says Phipps’ marketing and communications manager Liz Fetchin, at a recent presentation in New York City: to create a building that “literally has as much impact on the environment as a flower.” Read more.
The CSL looks, appropriately, like a modern greenhouse. In order to comply with Living Building Challenge guidelines, issued by the International Living Future Institute, Pittsburgh-based Design Alliance Architects, have constructed a sleek glass fishbowl, with a rectangular glass extension that features salvaged wood siding. Recycled steel provides structural support, and local flora populate both the CSL’s grounds and its interiors.
And not only is it pretty, but this 24,350-square-foot structure also produces all its own renewable power, thanks to the use of solar panels, geothermal wells, and a wind turbine, as well as passive cooling, heating, and lighting methods. The CSL also features a green roof, a lagoon, rain gardens, permeable paved surfaces, constructed wetlands, and a water distillation system—and its evolving, sustainable landscape has nine different native plant communities that will provide habitat for wildlife and be irrigated with water collected on site.
With the CSL, and with its many other commitments to sustainable design and living, Phipps is turning the idea of the botanic garden on its head. “Greenhouses and botanic gardens are, historically, not green at all,” says Richard Piacentini, Phipps’ executive director. “You have these single-planed glass buildings meant to grow tropical plants in non-tropical environments. The goal was to conquer nature.” But threats such as global warming have given gardens like Phipps incentive to work with, rather than against, nature. “It’s all about beauty and connecting people to nature by highlighting vital relationships between ourselves, plants, health, and the planet.” says Piacentini. “The CSL is the ultimate expression of our systems‐based way of thinking and acting, to blur the lines between the built and natural environments.”
Photos: Alexander Denmarsh Photography
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