The David Brower Center in Berkeley, California received a Green Building Super Heroes Award from the Northern California chapter of the US Green Building Council (USGBC-NCC). The project—for which San Francisco-based WRT/Solomon E.T.C. served as the lead firm and provided architectural and landscape architectural services—was given the Green Team Award, which "recognizes a green building and project team whose vision and practices illustrate the best in green building." The award will be presented at the third annual Green Building Super Heroes Awards Gala on October 30th, 2009 at the California Academy of Sciences.
"This project is about big themes, such as repairing and regenerating urban centers, integrating low-income families into the economic and cultural mainstream, and the creation of buildings that connect people to the outside world," said WRT/Solomon E.T.C.'s founder and principal in charge of the David Brower Center project, Daniel Solomon. "The Green Team Award is a recognition of this building as an archetype of the collaborative process harnessing the knowledge and best energies of specialists."
The David Brower Center, and its companion building Oxford Plaza, builds upon the inherent richness of downtown Berkeley with a combination of affordable housing, environmental education, and a venue for art and the arts community. This mixed-use project—named after prominent environmentalist David Brower—houses 97 apartments, space for the arts, a restaurant, underground parking, and 29,000 square feet of office and educational space for environmental non-profits. A proposed USGBC Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum rating for the project is based on environmental technologies and architectural elements related to daylighting, natural ventilation, photovoltaic power generation, and solar hot water, among other criteria. The LEED system, in which Platinum is the highest rating, provides a way to benchmark green design and enables environmentally-sustainable construction.
"Creating a high-performance building requires integrating the intelligence of each design discipline, and cultivating that teamwork became our first principle," said Peter Buckley, founder and president of the center. "We are pleased and honored to be recognized for that spirit of collaboration, and even more pleased with the building that resulted from our work together. Today we find that spirit of respect and collaboration lives on in the work of the Brower Center."
This is the second award bestowed upon the project this year. In May, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG)—a regional planning agency incorporating various local governments surrounding San Francisco—gave the David Brower Center and Oxford Plaza a "Building a Better Bay Area - Urban Design" award.
