team to work with Accident Fund for about a year to show the insurer exactly what the building could become, how it could serve Accident Funds’ needs and how the water- front area could be revitalized by making the former power plant a keystone for the area. “The building is gorgeous and has a lot of historic significance,” Gardi notes. “There was never a point where Accident Fund said ‘let’s just tear it down,’ but there was a lot of visioning involved.” Reynolds adds: “When I first walked into
the Ottawa Street Power Station before we’d even made the decision we were go- ing to do this, I really struggled with see- ing the ultimate vision and what it could be. All those public-private entities had to work with the singular goal of seeing this through. No one ever underestimated the complexity of the project and everyone committed their best and brightest to re- ally overcome any obstacles and manage the complexity.” Christman’s team utilized energy model-
ing early on to assist in the design process. “The building was in essence designed to lose heat because there were huge boilers in it,” Gardi explains. “We used life-cycle costing and energy modeling to determine what type of glazing to replace the existing windows with, what type of HVAC system to install, and how much of the interior
walls we could fur out and insulate because we wanted to keep a good portion visible.” Meanwhile, Accident Fund established
guiding principles it referred to as SMART— Strategically focused, Manage our assets, Attentive to our corporate culture, Respon- sible corporate citizens, and Take advantage of natural resources. SMART ensured every design charrette and planning meeting met the insurer’s high-performance goals for its new space. Consequently, the build- ing has been certified LEED Gold despite only seeking LEED Certified status. “We set overall project goals, one of
them being a sustainable building,” Gardi explains. “In this case, we designed to meet the SMART goals and then in each stage in the process we pulled out the LEED check- list to determine how we were doing— not the other way around. The integrated design process and a real team approach helped achieve Gold.”
Like a Ship in a Bottle Those who worked on the project com-
pare it to removing a ship from a bottle and then building another ship within the same bottle. Construction engineer Ruby + Associates Inc., Farmington Hills, Mich., used a laser point cloud to map the inside of the existing building with the new struc- ture. “This was extremely complicated and it couldn’t have been done without BIM
Between the original brick structure and a glass-enclosed addition, an orange post and gray beam that were once used to bring materials into the power plant now add artistic flair to the campus.