NREL Research Support Facility

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NREL Research Support Facility

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Commercial › Office

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is exploring ways of creating a new sustainable office building for its research support facility, in addition to setting a precedent for the design of zero-energy office buildings of the future. This project was carried out at Roger Williams University in the Summer of 2007, after taking part in a design charrette on the NREL campus. See the links below for info on the actual design proposal, the construction of which by Haselden Construction is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2010. A sustainable office building would incorporate existing site conditions to assist itself in the production of energy and the reduction of energy consumption. A sustainable office building would explore new office layout concepts that promote workplace efficiency and a collaborative environment. A comfortable sustainable working space would increase productivity and worker creativity, while displaying the sustainable building technologies towards which the new facility would be working.The energy concept combined with the overlying site features drives the primary form of the building itself. Taking into account local site features such as wind, average humidity, and solar angles, the energy concept becomes a flexible set of design guidelines that affect material choice, building width and orientation, as well as the architectural language. These design guidelines are applied to the human scale bay way of views, spatial comfort, and logical programmatic sequencing. The result is a site intervention that responds to the scale of climate, site, the human proportion, and detail in a way that promotes sustainability in architecture. The fixing of the building’s orientation to the southern sun allows the primary facade to become the bold physical statement of the energy concept. The primary form of the building is a long, sweeping atrium that appears to hover above the ground but curved back to respond to the landscape and wind conditions. The atrium is the heart of the energy concept, but is a seamless integration of human scale environmental needs and function. The natural aspects of the site are carried through the building by means of the atrium, tracing the open office spaces throughout and providing the employees with a natural indoor space that improves overall health. The open office spaces are wide, un-obstructed spaces that sweep across the southern portion of the building, absorbing plentiful natural southern light as well as a wide range of changing views across the Colorado landscape. To promote teamwork and a non-sedentary working environment, office cubicles are broken up into smaller teams, which are further broken up into smaller taskforces - all with their own communal working space. Each taskforce has its own area for casual meeting and discussion, and a larger conference room is available for each larger group of teams. A small research area is provided for each team in its own space with material that focuses on the group’s objectives. A large main library is provided to meet the needs of greater research. The ground floor is more accessible to the workforce public, providing food service, areas for indoor and outdoor dining, and spaces for gathering and viewing the landscape. The ambiance and sustainable character of the facility is enhanced through the choice of materials. Warm earth tones are used throughout in the form of Tierrafino clay wall finish, which improved the interior air quality, and sandstone accents that are quarried within a 50 mile radius. These accents may become part of the linear parti and extend out into the landscape of the arroyo. The primary substructure for these finishes is a site-cast recycled concrete system that incorporates fly ash from local coal-burning plants. Raised floor cork panels are used in the office areas as it recalls the exterior natural environment and improves sound absorption, but is most importantly harvested from sustainable cork farms. The atrium employs fritted glass panels near the top, beginning where photovoltaic panels end, and filter down to being more transparent. The color and pattern of the frits could also enhance the connection with the exterior landscape. The north facades of each of the two buildings use a perforated steel rainscreen to give depth to the façade as well as to bring an industrial yet clean feel into the interior handrail and architectural details.All of these elements and strategies come together to create an environment that has a reduced dependency on mechanical heating and cooling, and also has provides a comfortable, naturally lit working space for employees.

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Kevin Mowatt

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NREL Research Support Facility

NREL Research Support Facility

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