by Shane Henson — March 12, 2012—Chicago-based architectural firm Perkins+Will has earned a great reputation for promoting innovation and sustainability in building design, which is reflected in the company’s own offices as well. Perkins+Will recently announced that its Atlanta office at 1315 Peachtree Street earned Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)Platinum with 95 points awarded, reported to be the most of any project in the northern hemisphere to date under the 2009 version of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for New Construction.
The office building, originally constructed in 1985 and located in the heart of Midtown Atlanta, across from the High Museum of Art, has been redesigned into a high-performance, sustainability-focused building. Perkins+Will purchased and began renovating the structure in 2009. The firm wanted to showcase its commitment to the environment and the transformative power of sustainable design by incorporating building re-use and renovation efforts into the concept of sustainability. In addition to LEED Platinum, the project is already a recipient of the Urban Land Institute’s Development of Excellence Award.
Perkins+Will’s Atlanta office occupies the top four floors of the mixed-use building. In line with one of the project’s goals of supporting the greater community of Atlanta, other tenants include The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA)—its presence made possible by infilling what was once the building’s parking deck—and the Peachtree Branch of the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library.
Reducing energy use and increasing efficiency were key to the building’s design. Exterior renovations include more energy efficient exterior glazing and alterations to the front façade. An exterior terrace on the fifth floor serves as lunch, meeting and office social space. It also features a garden for employees to get their “green” thumbs dirty.
The interior represents the latest in workplace design, encouraging collaboration through office-wide wifi network access, computational nodes, collaborative benching-style workstations and multipurpose team rooms with transparent walls that can be easily reconfigured to incorporate the largest amount of input from all staff. The building is equipped with raised flooring and a radiant heating and cooling system, the first of its kind in Atlanta. It utilizes passive sun shading on lower levels and an active, dynamic exterior sunshade on the building terrace level to control afternoon sunlight and heat gain. The building’s design also incorporates views and natural daylight in virtually every occupied space. Lighting control strategies such as daylight harvesting and reduced ambient lighting coupled with the use of LED lamps also reduce the building’s energy needs.
Microturbines and an adsorption chiller on the building’s roof are part of a trigeneration system. By using natural gas to produce electricity, the building’s carbon footprint is reduced by 68 percent to comply with the 2030 challenge for reduced greenhouse gas emissions. And in Atlanta, where water availability has become an important issue, a 10,000-gallon cistern catches rainwater that is then filtered, treated and re-circulated for landscape irrigation and low-flow urinals and toilets.
All of these initiatives together have helped the building cut energy consumption by 58 percent and municipally supplied potable water use by 78 percent, Perkins+Will says.
