Case Study A: Sustainability and State Regulations: A Tale of Two Projects

Presented from the St. Paul Location

While sustainability is a global goal, it’s a decidedly local practice, as this deep dive comparison into two recent BWBR-designed projects will demonstrate. The North Dakota State Lab (housing the departments of Environmental Quality and Health & Human Services) and the University of Minnesota Fraser Hall Chemistry building offer an opportunity to compare and contrast approaches to sustainable solutions when working with multiple stakeholders, existing campus constraints, and very different state regulatory requirements.

Fraser Hall is a careful renovation of a nearly 100-year-old library building alongside a new addition, where the bulk of the program includes chemistry teaching labs and related spaces such as hazardous materials storage. The North Dakota State Laboratory is new construction on the state capitol campus and includes testing and research labs, biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) space, a public tour route, training rooms, and offices. While both projects are over 100,000 gsf and share sustainability goals around reduced energy consumption without compromising safety, they diverge in the needs of their program spaces, the regulatory requirements of their respective jurisdictions and, as a result, the way their sustainability aspirations were achieved.

The takeaway? While local regulations can dramatically influence the design process, there is still a way to achieve sustainable results which successfully serve the owner, the end users, and ultimately the community.

Presenters:

• Kat Lauer, Lab Planner, BWBR
• Brian Lapham, Project Manager & Lab Planner, BWBR
• Cesar Honorio-Arroyo, Lab Planner, BWBR
• Wes Schlichting, Mechanical Engineer, Dunham

Tony Nelson, Project Manager and Electrical Engineer, CMTA

Case Study B: Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences: A Model for Sustainable, Interdisciplinary Design

Presented from the Chicago Location

The new Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is poised to redefine the university’s approach to interdisciplinary research, inspiring scientists, creators, and students to deliver world-changing results all under one roof. Once completed in the fall of 2027, the seven-story, 338,900-square-foot facility will house the Mellon College of Science, the School of Computer Science, and the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) Pittsburgh. Occupying a prominent site adjacent to landmark Pittsburgh institutions such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences will strengthen connections between CMU and the city’s broader cultural landscape while establishing a welcoming and exuberant campus edge.

Economic pressures, particularly those arising from post-pandemic inflation, have shaped the project’s evolution in significant ways. The design team reevaluated key components to enhance programmatic efficiency and operational resilience, prompting a strong focus on embodied carbon reduction. The site’s unique challenges, including shallow rock formations and a steep grade, resulted in intelligent excavation methods and design strategies that enhanced the building’s physical integration with the campus and surrounding neighborhood.

Presenters:

• Cameron Fritts – Mechanical Engineer, Affiliated Engineers, Designer
• Chris Augustyn – Senior Project Engineer, Affiliated Engineers, Designer
• Steve Dowd – Principal, Affiliated Engineers, Building Performance
• Brad Reed – Principal, ZGF Architects, Project Management Lead
• Jesse Wetzel – Associate, ZGF Architects, Project Design Lead

Case Study C: Microgrids- What’s possible

Presented from the Madison Location

Faith Technologies designed and installed a microgrid system for our Vision center in Stockbridge, WI. This microgrid system serves a 40 acre parcel with a 19,000 square foot Vision Center, an EV Charging Depot, two residential homes, a small office building, a shop, and 6 future condos. We can provide all electricity to these facilities without an electrical utility connection. We do have a gas utility connection for our combustion engine for long winter nights.

FTI had to work through plenty of challenges to ensure reliability and resiliency with a microgrid that is not connected to the utility. We have multiple battery energy storage systems, and multiple solar arrays that work together to provide sufficient power. Our control system for the microgrid makes decisions in real time what to do with power generated by our solar array, when to deploy stored energy in the battery systems, and when to call for generation from our combustion engine.

Presenters:

• Matt Sabee- Group Leader Field Energy with Faith Technologies
• Sawyer Stuckey- Pre-construction Manager with Faith Technologies
• Dan Nordloh- Senior Vice President and GM, DCentriQ