4 Photos by Bill Browning
4 Ray C. Anderson Plant & Interface Systems Customer Center 5 Interface Headquarters: Base Camp
5
amount of purchased water and the amount of water going into the sewer. The forest on the site would have sequestered 3.4 metric tonnes of carbon per year.
The building’s current owner believes that the long-term goal for the operation of the building is to have the carbon balance, water balance and biodiversity of the facility match what the site would have been doing in 1609. The organisation likes aspirational goals as a way to drive innovation. So, their long-term goal is to move from a carbon footprint of 77,000 metric tonnes to –3.4 metric tonnes per year. Some of the steps in that process include a time tranche energy model that looks at energy performance in five-year increments, which are tied to expiration of various leases. Over time, the data centres will be replaced by office space, which will dramatically lower energy use. The envelope of the building is being retrofitted in stages as well, and over time the building’s HVAC systems will be consolidated into one central system. This frees up space on the roof for extensive plants of trees and other greenery, which will increase the native biodiversity of the site. The carbon goal is ambitious, and may need a scale jump, which might be to fund renewable energy systems for nearby schools and public housing.
Over time, the water system will be shifted to only use purchased potable water for drinking and cooking. Other water will either be captured from rainwater and from the stream that currently pumps out of the sub-basement or water reclaimed from mechanical systems. The first cisterns have been installed and are capturing 19M litres per year; as the mechanical and other systems shift over time, more cisterns will be installed. Eventually, the building will have a water balance similar to what it had in 1609.
FACTORY AS A FOREST The commercial flooring company, Interface, is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and has factories in seven locations around the world. In 1994, Ray Anderson, their founding CEO, had an epiphany that led him to launch an ambitious effort to become the most sustainable company possible. That eventually became Mission Zero, which had a goal of zero emissions, zero carbon and zero waste by 2020. By 2015, they realised that they were going achieve their goals, and that that achievement was not enough. So, the company committed to Drawdown, a concept that to truly reverse climate change, it is necessary to begin to lower the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. This implies looking at ways to sequester carbon on an annual basis, in their products, in their operations, and in their facilities around the world. The facilities portion of the effort is called Factory as a Forest. It comes from a conversation between Ray Anderson and biologist Janine Benyus of B3.8, in which he asked if his factories could ever perform as well as the forest that had been on those sites.
The concept was first explored on a factory in Australia, and then refined on two factories in rural Georgia, and the Base Camp building, the company’s new headquarters in Atlanta. These factories and the office building are located in the Southern Outer Piedmont Forest. The US Forest Service manages an intact example of this ecosystem in a wildlife refuge near Atlanta. The biologists at B3.8 used this forest as the model for deriving the ecosystem service metrics. Terrapin Bright Green then worked with them to translate those metrics into building performance measures.
The 17 metrics developed for the Factory as a Forest project (see sidebar) were then used to explore design strategies for an expansion of one of the factory locations, operational changes for both factory sites, and design measures for the new headquarters building in Atlanta.
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