The Aldo Leopold Legacy Centre

The Aldo Leopold Legacy Centre is the first net zero energy building and the first carbon neutral building certified by LEED. The Leopold Centre has received Platinum LEED Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council

The centre will produce approximately 115% of annual building energy needs.
Designed by The Kubala Washatko Architects Inc The Leopold Centre helps us to envision how we can use energy more efficiently and develop positive relationships to other people and the planet. The Aldo Leopold Centre should be one of 20 newly constructed Platinum

The project team used crushed gravel in place of blacktop or concrete paving, increasing rainwater infiltration and blending the developed areas into the surrounding landscape. The native landscaping requires no irrigation. Waterless urinals, dual-flush toilets, and efficient faucets reduce water consumption by 65%. An on-site well provides potable water, and an existing septic system treats wastewater. The recycled stone aqueduct shown on the left funnels rainwater into a rain garden and provides a focal point for the exterior courtyard.

 precipitation managed on site: 100% Total water used indoors: 40,492 gal/yr Total water used outdoors: 0 gal/yr percent of total water from reclaimed sources: 0% percent wastewater reused on-site: 0% Calculated annual potable water use: 3.41 gal/sf/yr

Approximately 90,000 board feet of site-harvested lumber was milled and dried locally for window frames, doors, siding, flooring, paneling, and artisan-crafted furniture.

pine trees were debarked on-site, air-dried, and used to construct innovative round wood rafters and trusses. nearly all of the Legacy Centers timber skeleton was built with Leopold pines. The Leopold Foundation secured Forest stewardship Council (FsC) chain-ofcustody certification for its own wood through the smartwood certification body.

Materials with recycled content were used throughout the project. The roof includes high levels of recycled aluminum, for example, and the concrete has flyash in place of much of the portland cement.

The rainwater aqueduct and fireplace were made of stone reclaimed from an airplane hanger built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
The project team also preferred local and regional materials; interior walls were plastered with local sand, clay, and straw, and 60% of all materials, by cost, were manufactured within 500 miles of the project site.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation used waste pulp generated by Leopold pines to print a special edition of A sand County Almanac on archival-quality paper made through an experimental pulping process that used no chlorine or sulfur.

n
w
December 21 June 21
at 12 PM

Site Shading
at 9 PM
at 3 PM

Shading device
May sun angle

November sun angle

extreme temperatures
Celsius

: 43 to -40 degrees

Environmental Aspects

Heating and cooling system: radian Tempered fresh air : earth tub

Radiant flooring
Unique features of this system is the use of radiant cooling along with radiant heating. Systems in the United States have typically used radiant panels only for heating because cooling requires that the relative humidity be monitored and cooling turned off when it exceeds a threshold.

internal tubing
mixture of a food grade glycol, a safe, vegetable based substance

Concrete slabs

( prevent the water from freezing inside the tubes )

4 thick sheets of rigid Laid plastic tube system styrofoam insulation is Installation of plastic tubes laid first

During construction

Concrete is carefully smoothed over the plastic tube system

Concrete poured over tubing to form floor

Dissipate heat In summer

Geothermal wells
(220 ft below earths surface)

Glycol mixture

Absorb heat In winter

Heat

Hot water

The system uses variable speed pumps to provide only the necessary flow. As each zones reach the desired temperature, it will be turned off and the pump will be slowed down to conserve even more energy.

Flows through exhibition hall, office area and breeze way

Energy Efficiency
Zero Energy Building

Zero Energy Building

Leopold Legacy Center is a carbon-neutral, net zero energy building (ZEB). Because of the efficient building techniques used, the Legacy Center requires very little energy. The Legacy Centers 39.6-kW rooftop photovoltaic (PV) array produces roughly 10% more than the energy needed to operate the building over the course of a year. (i.e 110%) This excess renewable energy,offsets the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the project's operations.

The Aldo

Daylighting eliminates the need for electric lighting during most of the day. Ground-source heat pumps connected to a radiant slab provide heating and cooling. Carefully selected HVAC system equipment, lighting, computers, and appliances further conserve energy. The separation of ventilation systems from heating and cooling systems, which results in a savings of two to five times the amount of energy used by a combined system. Ventilation-system energy consumption has been further reduced at the Leopold Center through the use of buried earth tubes on the site, which allow preheating of ventilation air during winter and precooling during summer before the air enters the building.

The Foundation located the project on

a previously disturbed site.

Crushed gravel is used in place of blacktop or concrete paving, increasing rainwater infiltration and blending the developed areas into the surrounding landscape. T he native landscaping requires no irrigation. Waterless urinals, dual-flush toilets, and efficient faucets reduce water consumption by 65%. The manufactured was 60% of all materials wereLegacy Center within designed to use 70% less 500 miles of the project site. energy than a comparable conventional building. A 39.6-kW rooftop photovoltaic array produces more than 110% of the project's annual electricity needs.

The reserve, originally planted by the Leopold family suffered from overcrowding.
A strategic thinning process not only would reduce the chance of catastrophic fire and insect damage, but also would provide an abundance of raw material with which to build. The site's geology, including more than 300 feet of sand, encourages natural percolation of rainwater. The team designed parking pockets with shaded areas to reduce the project's contribution to the urban heat-island effect and designed parking areas and roadways to circulate around existing trees.

Design
The most lasting achievement of the Legacy Center will be its strict adherence to a holistic design process consistent with Leopold's understanding of ecological systems. Combines both Technology and the historic knowledge about how to create comfortable, durable buildings with low-tech, low-energy, but highly intelligent solutions in a beautiful and functional space.

From the start of the schematic design phase through construction, the project-team meetings included the environmental consultant, the energy-simulation consultant, commissioning agent, and control-system consultant.

At the time of construction, the center met Architecture 2030 Challenge goals and was designed to consume zero net energy. Long, narrow floor plates - optimum natural ventilation and daylight. The building overhangs - shield sun in the summer and allow passive gain in the winter. The roof - bounce indirect natural light into the interior, reducing the need for electric lighting, and water is preheated by a roof-mounted evacuated tube solar array.

The pure sand has made excavation faster and easier, and can still be compacted enough to form an adequate building surface.

Construction

A particularly unique system is a set of earth tubes designed to ventilate the building.

An integral part of the HVAC system for heating and cooling the building, they were installed underneath the foundation in the construction.
The Legacy Center, the incoming air will travel through a series of underground concrete tubes, taking on the temperature of the earth. Compared to the extreme outdoor temperatures ranging from 20 to 95,the air in the earth tubes after traveling though the system will have a minimum temperature of 17 and a maximum temperature of 74. The earth tubes are made of a series of connected pieces of 24 diameter concrete pipe.

Earth Tubes

The sections are connected with a rubber gasket to prevent gases in the soil from leaching. The pipe itself is permeable enough to allow evaporation of any water. When the building is complete, it will be between 10 and 12below the ground surface. The pipes are connected at one end to a larger vertical pipe that will extend above ground and serve as the air intake. In the finished system, a metal roof and the sides will be enclosed with mesh to prevent of insects. At the other end, the maze of pipes is connected to the basement of the building, where the air will go through a filter and UV lamp to eliminate mold and bacteria before being heated or cooled and circulated throughout the building

Green strategies

Green Products Used

Low-VOC Acrylic Latex Interior Paint Photovoltaic Collectors Recycled-Content Cellulose Insulation

Structural Insulated Panels

Urea-Formaldehyde-Free Particleboard

Waterless Urinals
Zero-VOC Diversion of Construction &and Low-VOC Interior Demolition Waste Paints Measured by weight, 95% of construction waste was recycled.

Reusable Components
Use materials with integral finish

Materials

Design for Materials Use Reduction

Cluster buildings to minimize infrastructure requirements Consider the use of structural materials that do not require application of finish layers

Plan for Materials Longevity

Control rainwater flowing on building surfaces

Materials and Wildlife Habitat

Use wood products from independently certified, wellmanaged forests for rough carpentry Specify wood flooring from independently certified forestry operations Use wood products from

The building uses an innovative approach to energy management to create a net zero energy building.
The buildings performance has so far matched the modeling, which projects that the building will actually produce more energy than is consumed on an annual basis. This landmark net zero performance is rooted in fairly oldfashioned ideas--like maximizing insulation and capturing daylight and natural breezes--as well as advanced technologies that harvest the huge energy resources of the sun and the earth. The building incorporates a geothermal heat exchanger used in the water-based heating system. The system uses the earth's stable temperature to pre-heat or precool water relative to the air temperature The ground is always about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, so in the summer air brought into the building will already be cooler than the surrounding air and in the winter it will already be warmed In many ways the legacy centre is a ultimate smart building.

PERFORMANCE