Rec Center sports LEED silver certification

By Johanna Ohm     7/29/10 7:00pm

Visions of gold and silver medals swim through the minds of many hardworking athletes, avid sports enthusiasts and Olympic hopefuls zipping through their daily workouts. But aspirations of personal achievement and athletic success aren't the only reasons sports lovers are dwelling on silver at the new Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center. The Recreation and Wellness Center has recently been recognized by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design building certification system as having achieved silver status.The news of the certification status came in mid-May, making the Recreation and Wellness Center the third building at Rice to achieve certification, following the Rice Children's Campus building and the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. According to Susann Glenn, Rice's manager of communications for Facilities, Engineering and Planning, the Recreation and Wellness Center, like all new buildings at Rice, was designed with the intention of meeting silver qualifications at minimum. Glenn described the building as looking somewhat "lantern-like," with an abundance of large windows and translucent Kalwall, an insulating fiberglass material that allows sunlight to penetrate a room while preventing entrance of excess heat and glare that would come with traditional windows. Materials like Kalwall have allowed the facility to utilize natural daylight instead of artificial lighting, offsetting electricity expenses and reducing environmental impact.

Electricity isn't the only resource the building was designed to conserve. The bathrooms and locker rooms include low-flow showers and sinks and water-saving toilets. In addition to water resources, the impact of the building's construction and design on the land and atmosphere was minimized, since 2 million pounds of construction materials were recycled, rather than thrown away. Approximately 32 percent of the materials used came from within a 500-mile radius of campus, including the brick, concrete and the building's steel frame. Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson said even the palm trees by the pool were chosen with their environmental impact in mind; they are a low-maintenance, frost-hardy species native to the southern United States.

Despite the many materials that have maximized the center's environmental efficiency, Johnson placed particular emphasis on the way the project avoided the use of unnecessary materials, rather than just making use of less profligate ones. Rather than covering the floor with tiles or bamboo flooring, polished concrete composes most of the gym's flooring. According to Johnson, avoiding excess materials also helped to trim expenses, making the Wellness Center an example of how a green building doesn't necessarily come with added expense.

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"The greenest material is the one you don't use," Johnson said.

The LEED program was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to incentivize Earth-friendly building practices and award construction projects for minimizing their impact on the environment and human health. Key aspects of a building's construction and design are evaluated, including water efficiency, energy use, types of materials used, the sustainability of the building site, the quality of the indoor environment and "innovation in design," which awards points for any creative additions to a project that have enhanced its efficiency, according to the LEED website. The number of points obtained directly correlates to the awarded certification level, with 26 points being the minimum to achieve bronze, the lowest level of certification. For the Recreation and Wellness Center, the silver certification was achieved with a minimum of 33 points. An excess of 38 points qualifies a project for gold certification and point values more than 52 will qualify for the highest level, platinum.

Although both Glenn and Johnson are pleased with the completed Recreation and Wellness Center project, they said green technology is still evolving and they are hopeful that some aspects of the building, particularly the heating of the outdoor swimming pools, can become even more efficient with time.

"Buildings learn and grow just as people do," Glenn said, adding her hopes that the adaptability of the new center will make it energy efficient not only by today's standards, but by new standards in the future.

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