by Shane Henson — March 30, 2012—After turning to SAGE Electrochromic’s electronically tintable SageGlass to improve the lighting of its headquarters, Mercy Corps, a global aid agency, was not only able to dramatically enhance its lighting and energy efficiency, but to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council as well.
Mercy Corps, which runs disaster relief and community development efforts in more than 40 countries, aimed to consolidate its headquarters in a building that reflected its sustainability values. The more money it saves in building energy efficiency, the more it can invest in its life-saving efforts around the world, it says.
In refurbishing the historic 19th-century building, the organization incorporated natural daylight as part of the project’s eco-friendly strategies. But since sunlight is a scarce resource in the Pacific Northwest, Mercy Corps wanted a solution that would allow it to harvest every available ray of sunlight. It chose SageGlass, which maximizes daylight while controlling heat gain. SageGlass can be tinted or cleared on demand, depending on the condition outside or the needs of the building occupants.
SageGlass is typically glazed in to the curtain wall or skylights of a building. In this application, it was installed as an exterior shade at every floor on the south-facing facade, providing critical solar control in the building’s lobby and conference room.
Preventing heat gain without blocking the sun helped enable the project’s architects, THA Architecture, to incorporate operable windows throughout the building and motorized clerestory windows in the atrium. Both SageGlass and the atrium windows are integrated into the building’s energy management system and activate automatically when the temperature changes.
The efforts are paying off. The Mercy Corps building has begun delivering 69 percent better energy performance than conventional office buildings, according to a study by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. It has also received a number of design awards, including the Carbon Consciousness Award, Best Green Building from McGraw-Hill Construction, and Most Admired Non-Profit Building from the Oregon Business Journal.
