Boston, MA. The Hitchcock Center for the Environment with designLAB Architects received the Boston Society of Architects’ (BSA) 2018 Honor Award for Sustainable Design, presented in Boston on January 17, 2019.
The BSA jury selected the Hitchcock Center for it’s highest Honor Award in the Sustainable Design category noting that:
“Hitchcock Center for the Environment is a strong example of architecture’s power to educate. This center doesn’t merely talk the talk by housing an environmental educational program; it walks the walk. Living Building Challenge (LBC) designed, the structure is thoughtfully integrated with its site and existing systems. Its formal qualities, its graphics, and its performance achievements combine to tell a complete and compelling story about design.”
The jury’s comments and award provide recognition of a long-time Hitchcock Center goal – to create a building that serves as an educator, a teaching tool for all ages. Students and educators actively use the building, landscape, exhibits, and systems as a testing ground to ask, “What does sustainability look like in the built environment and in my community?”
L to R: Jessica Schultz, Communications and Living Building Coordinator Hitchcock Center, Sam Batchelor, Partner, designLAB Architects, Colleen Kelly Education Director, Hitchcock Center receive the BSA Honor Award for Sustainable Design. Photo: Kit Castagne
Through programs and curricula, the building helps continually reinforce the Hitchcock Center’s mission to educate for a healthy planet. At a time when Americans spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, and the built environments around us account for approximately 40% of our national energy usage, the Hitchcock Center’s building is a powerful catalyst for new kinds of programming in sustainability education.
Examples of building as educator
Water Systems: A pilot system engineered to capture and treat 100% of the building’s potable water on site includes a system of large, clear cylindrical tanks with color-coded piping exhibit the dynamic “first flush” step of rainwater collection. These collection and on-site treatment systems are monitored in real time on the building dashboard, an electronic touch-screen accessible to visitors, and are also accessible on the Hitchcock Center’s website. These systems not only prominently showcase opportunities for net-zero technologies to users, they also prove the viability of net-zero systems to regulatory agencies through their measurable outcomes and metrics.Building educational programs
curricula for elementary ages, centered on building systems and design. An introduction to sustainable design concepts, it is designed to meet the Massachusetts Curriculum Standards for STEM education, and has also been published nationally through the National Science Teachers Association. This pioneering educational model offers students access to real-world examples and building scenarios using the same challenges presented to the Hitchcock Center’s engineering team. Classroom instruction and investigation is balanced with a fieldtrip to the Hitchcock Center (for local schools), reinforcing a new green future where the built environment exists in harmony with the natural environment and local community. As of June 2018, a total of 59 teachers have been trained on his curriculum, and 563 students from 31 classrooms in 26 local schools have participated in this initiative.
Completed in 2016, the Hitchcock Center’s 9,000 square foot Living Building, designed by designLAB architects (Boston) and built by Wright Builders (Northampton), is now an agent of change for our regional community, successfully achieving net-positive energy production in its first year of operation.
With full Living Building Challenge 2.1 certification pending in 2019, the project must prove it is actively meeting the requirements of seven “petals” (or performance categories): energy, materials, water, site, equity, beauty, and health. During the one-year performance period, projects must demonstrate their net-zero energy and water usage, as well as appeal to government agencies when regulations prevent net-zero building, and advocate with manufacturers to employ transparent, sustainable practices.
The Hitchcock Center pursued LBC for its advocacy and leadership in establishing better building practices, committing to the exclusive use of zero-toxicity, locally-sourced, and responsibly-harvested materials.
The broad impact on the future of sustainable design and planning was highlighted by the BSA jury in reviewing this year’s Honor Award projects. Their thinking echoes the categories and performance standards required by the Living Building Challenge and exhibited by the Hitchcock Center’s building.
“Over the last few years, the sustainability conversation has advanced, sharpened, and shifted. Evident among the submitted work were numerous examples of how new strategies for materials, systems, energy, and design have been recently introduced or advanced. The jury noted with appreciation that sustainable design finally seems to mean something foundational, conceptual, and strategic rather than additive.
The overall quality of work was strong but stimulated the jury to ask critical questions aimed at the profession. How relevant are certifications? Shouldn’t data and metrics matter more? How far beyond the architectural object can design take sustainability? How can we be sure these projects continue to efficiently and elegantly serve their users in the future?
It is no exaggeration to say that sustainable management of energy, water, land, and raw materials is one the greatest quests of this modern era. The jury hopes the projects recognized here will forge a new baseline, and that future juries will be reviewing innovations that were catalyzed by the vision of architects, designers, engineers, and other AEC professionals working so diligently today.”
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax
Congrats, Hitchock and all those who worked so hard to make this great award happen! My husband, John Robinson, who oversaw the completion of the Living Building Challenge structure, the Kern Center at Hampshire College, met weekly with the Hitchcock’s architecture consultant Chris Riddle on the hurdles of geting a structure to meet the LBC standards. It takes a community to get one of these wonderful buildings completed – Well done all!! Lucy Robinson
Hi Lucy, I’m replying for Julie here…John was a great source of support for Chris Riddle, me and our team. Thank you John and thanks for sharing Lucy! Our sustainable building is truly inspirational to be and work in. All of us at the Hitchcock Center are grateful to the amazing support of our community, the creative talents of our design team led by designLAB architects and the recognition of the BSA!!