Our George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health was featured in Jan/Feb 2018 issue of Architectural Products illustrating how the design of the building promotes occupants’ health, well-being and desire for community.
Winner of two top AIA awards, the new home of the Milken Institute School of Public Health has become a landmark of sorts on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The building’s wedge-shaped site offers a gateway position to the school’s Foggy Bottom campus and architects from Boston-based Payette, along with local associate firm Ayers Saint Gross, made the most of that location, with a glassy façade facing out toward an adjacent city park.
But it’s in how the building’s interior reflects the school’s border philosophy of the teaching and practice of public health that its real innovation lies – a fact noted by judges of the 2017 AIA Awards for Interior Architecture. Through a creative rethinking of how academic buildings are typically organized and broad attention to occupants’ health, well-being and desire for community, designers might have created a new paradigm for this market. And, as a winner of a 2017 AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten award, the LEED Platinum building also reflects real respect for the broader D.C. community, as well.
Read article.
This Earth Week, we’ll be covering five landmark buildings exemplifying new approaches to building performance and sustainability.
The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Klarman Building is the first hospital in the northeast to implement chilled beams in an inpatient setting. Early energy analysis demonstrated that the use of chilled beams would be the best way to reduce building energy use.
For this strategy to work, however, the peak thermal loads of the façades could not exceed the capacity of the chilled beams. An integrated design approach and in-house modeling allowed for constant tuning of the façade to optimize glazing, solar exposure and massing. The building orients glazing to face true north and south to minimize heat gain and maximize occupant comfort, resulting in a 15% reduction in peak solar load.
Beyond performance, the distinctive serrated terracotta façade reflects the scale and cadence of individual patient rooms, providing a delicate scale and texture to the façade.
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