Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of five articles about Dartmouth and the environment. They will be published every other day.
The structures Dartmouth builds are the most visible impact of the College on its environment -- and they also have the potential to be the most wasteful. Can Dartmouth really consider itself a leader in environmentally-friendly architecture?
From construction materials to energy consumption, Dartmouth's buildings -- and their designs -- are tremendously important to the College's ecological "footprint," the resources it uses to sustain itself.
Recent developments in architecture design and technology have given rise to several striking examples of just how possible it is to develop buildings with a much lower environmental impact.
For example, world-renowned architect Bill McDonough's '73 environmental studies department building at Oberlin College utilized principals of design such as use of natural sunlight to demonstrate how much environmental considerations could transform a design.
Dartmouth has received some criticism for not being a leader in this type of architecture.
"The College, when they did the library addition, and many of the buildings they've made, have hired classically-trained architects who don't pay attention to the kinds of impacts it has on the environment around Dartmouth and the effect it has on the surroundings," said Rolf Kielman '70, an architect at Truex Cullins and Partners of Burlington, Vermont.
Dartmouth's location, the nature of its mission and even its unofficial mascot -- the Big Green -- all make it a natural leader in environmental issues like architecture, said Kielman. As an alumni, he said he was disappointed that Dartmouth had not become a leader in the issue more quickly.
Jack Wilson, the associate director of facilities planning, who is spearheading the drive to incorporate environmental considerations into the designs of Dartmouth's newest buildings, disagrees.
Wilson said Dartmouth is a leader in environmentally friendly architecture but has not gotten the credit it deserved.
The trouble is that so many of the changes Dartmouth has made for its newest buildings are integrated into the systems that are not readily visible -- like insulation, control of heating and cooling and the electrical systems of a building.
"I think we've been very environmentally responsible," Wilson said. "That's a hard thing to show people because they've just been buried in these systems."
Dartmouth's latest building is the McCulloch residence hall. It has a number of these overlooked features. For McCulloch, Wilson said, the designers focused on making sure the building's "envelope" -- the shell of the building which prevents energy loss for things like climate control -- was as tight as possible.
To achieve this, Dartmouth opted for higher quality windows, walls and insulation, according to Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman.
They also installed a new heating system -- "valience" heating -- that was quieter and more efficient than what Redman called "psychological" heating, in which an entire building is heated the same amount by steam.
By using a manifold instead of a simple circuit, McCulloch's system has the added benefit of allowing students to partially control the heat in their own rooms.
The architects and designers of McCulloch made other subtle considerations like decentralizing the hot water heating systems, using wood from the College land grant to build furniture and using motion sensors for lighting in public places.
"Those are little things," said Redman. "But on the whole they add up to significant money saved."
Dartmouth's next set of buildings will be the Kemeny math building and Maynard Street residence halls and combination dining and social space.
They will all be located on the north side of campus and are all being designed by the same set of architects, led Moore Ruble Yudell from California, who have combined forces with Bruner-Cott and Associates from Cambridge, Mass. for the job.
Technology has advanced significantly in the short time since McCulloch was built, Redman said. For example, a smaller fluorescent light bulb will be able to provide more light that is more pleasant to live with than the overhead lights currently installed in McCulloch.
However, the biggest difference between the new buildings and those just completed will probably turn out to be the introduction of a new standard for measuring how environmentally friendly Dartmouth's buildings are.
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design building rating system was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to evaluate how environmentally friendly buildings are.
LEED works on a point system -- a higher number of points allows a building to be certified as bronze, silver, gold or platinum.
The University of Vermont Law School's newest building, considered a pinnacle of sustainable design, is certified by LEED as meeting its gold standard. Dartmouth will aim for all its new buildings to meet at least silver, according to Wilson.
Dartmouth will be using resources gathered locally, from at most 500 miles away, for the new buildings, according to Woody Eckels, the director of residential operations at the office of residential life.
Other environmental considerations are using bamboo for the building's hardwood floors, which is a renewable resource that grows quickly, using the heat from shower's waste water to heat clean water and using radiant heat in floors, which is more efficient than heating air higher up.
A lot of these choices come down to common sense, like making Dartmouth buildings last as long as possible, Wilson said.
Redman noted that buildings like Gerry, which came before environmental considerations became prominent during the 1970s oil crisis "would never get built on the campus today, nor in the future, nor should they."
But Wilson admitted that environmental considerations were not the first issue the College considered when building new residence halls. "A lot of it comes down to whether it's a productive place to live and work," said Wilson. "That's what we're trying to provide."
The next article in this five-part series will deal with student environmental activism.
