By John Tredrea, The Packet Group
A structure in Bedminster designed by Pennington architect Keith Hone has been named 2007 Project of the Year by the New Jersey Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council.
Mr. Hone’s Willow School Art Barn also was awarded Leadership Energy Environmental Design certification at the Platinum level. Platinum is the highest award from LEED, which operates under the auspices of the U.S. Green Building Council, part of the federal government’s General Services Administration.
”It’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Hone said of striving for environmentally sound or “green” goals in architectural design. “We’ve found that by paying attention to sustainability throughout design and construction, we help the environment and save money, too.”
The Willow School Art Barn, for example, actually returns electricity to the power grid during the summer, which is by far the peak time of the year for electrical demand.
”Photovoltaic panels provide 75 percent of the barn’s power needs,” Mr. Hone said. “The school is closed in the summer. During that time, the barn puts electricity back into the grid.”
The grid is comprised of utility firms like PSE&G, which provide electric power to paying customers. For most consumers, it probably seems a bit of a shock, no pun intended, to contemplate the idea of electricity being sent to the power company by the customer instead of the other way ‘round.
Mr. Hone, 51, of North Main Street, Pennington, has offices in Lambertville. He has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and a master’s in that field from Columbia.
The 12,000-square-foot Art Barn he designed is part of the grade K-eighth Willow School, an independent school in Bedminster. The school is run by Mark and Gogo Biedron.
”Sustainability is a big part of their learning system,” Mr. Hone said.
The barn currently is being used for classrooms.
”They have one classroom section per grade level right now,” he said. “The goal is to use it for the fine arts when they’ve expanded to two sections per grade level.”
All spaces in the Art Barn are afforded direct views of outdoor learning environments or gardens. Computer modeling was used to ensure that daylight provides illumination for more than 80 percent of the space in the building.
The principal structure for a studio that is part of the Art Barn was salvaged from a barn slated for demolition. Nearly 85 percent of the waste from the construction of the Art Barn was diverted from landfills.
All of the building’s wastewater is treated in an onsite constructed wetlands that transforms the wastewater to recreational-quality water.
Among the other green accomplishments that landed the Art Barn the only Platinum LEED award received in the state are:
• Thirty-four percent of the building’s materials were locally manufactured; 24 percent were locally harvested. Use of local materials cuts the need for transportation. That means less use of fossil fuel.
• Seventy-nine percent of the wood used in the Art Barn is certified as being taken from sustainably managed forests.
• Thirty-three percent of the building’s materials are salvaged or recycled.
Mr. Hone has designed a number of buildings in this area, including the Cambridge School in Pennington and the gym at the Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart. He’s also designed a building for the Somerset Hills Learning Institute and a veterinary hospital near Oldwick.
”LEED was set up to try to change the marketplace,” he said. “It’s been very successful. It gives a system for measuring the environmental impacts of a building in terms of water, energy, materials, indoor air quality, daylight and site impact.”
LEED offers architects and other professionals seminars and other training on how to develop sustainable buildings.
”When I became accredited by LEED five years ago, there were about 1,200 architects involved,” Mr. Hone said. “It’s up to 60,000 now.”
The Willow School Art Barn was the 40th structure to receive a LEED Platinum award.
”There are about 100 Platinum buildings now and not just here in the States.” Mr. Hone said.
Structures in Dubai and India have received the platinum award.
The architect thinks the practice of sustainability in his field “is inevitable.”
He said, “Early on, there was a perception it would be very expensive to do it. We found that, in the end, it doesn’t cost more. It costs less while protecting our resources much more than we used to do. As far as the construction of buildings goes, we were kind of going the wrong way for a long time. But I think we’ve turned it around. It’s a big deal.”
