Case Studies Green Building

When Kessler Construction LLC broke ground in March 2016 for an exclusive subdivision just a couple of miles from the traffic beltway that encircles the hustle and bustle of Tallahassee, Florida, the foundation was laid for much more than just another neighborhood of upscale, custom houses. The Southern Oaks project marked the start of Leon […]

When the city of Pasadena, California, or one of the nearby communities, tinkers with its zoning code or elects a new Planning Commission, principals Rob Tyler and Javier Gonzalez pay attention. The firm they co-founded more than 30 years ago, Tyler Gonzalez Architects, has a vested interest in reading the pulse of the community. Much […]

Alexis Peck knows that with tighter budgets, shorter timelines and the occasional political situation to weather over, nothing in government projects is ever set in stone. As vice president of design for Peck Peck & Associates (PP&A), an architecture firm based in Woodbridge, Virginia, she has seen budgets and schedules change overnight with the signing […]

Institutional clients like schools and healthcare providers are increasingly willing to invest long term, both with the incorporation of renewable energy and sustainable design. That makes them ideal clients for architecture firms like NK Architects. NK Architects is a full-service architecture, interior design, planning and structural engineering firm based in Morristown, New Jersey. It works […]

John Harlan, president of The Harlan Company, wasn’t planning on making a green building—or rather, the greenest building. But in 2015, he and others at the company learned about a private school in Missouri that needed a remotely located classroom built to the highest environmental standards set by the Living Building Challenge (LBC). The company […]

Originally the nation’s first public high school for African-Americans, Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., had fallen into such disrepair that in 2011, the district opted not to renovate but to raze and rebuild. “A dark, dingy and nearly windowless high-rise,” the Washington Post deemed it. Its principal likened it to a prison. Its replacement […]

People have been building with stones, blocks and bricks since before they had language to describe what they were building. Sturdy, fireproof and low maintenance, stone buildings have carried humanity from the temples and fortresses of ancient civilizations to modern skyscrapers. As the times have changed and the materials have evolved, the need for craftsmanship […]

Gene Li knows better than to take a well-lit street for granted. In 2015, his clean energy equipment supplier and engineering consultant company, Atlantic Clean Energy Supply LLC (ACES), was approached by a small coastal city in Long Island, New York, because one of the town’s neighborhoods didn’t have access to the street light power […]

Legatus6 is in the midst of building a 1.75 megawatt solar system that will feed 13.2 kilovolts into the power distribution loop at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida. Working with that much power, while working within the federal government’s stringent requirements, has become Legatus6’s niche. It’s a niche that happened by accident, says […]

In 2015, when R. Vaughn Poppell and Tim Tucker founded Praesidium Homes LLC, a construction company specializing in insulated concrete forms (ICFs), their goal was to bring a superior method of building to the “average Joe” of Tallahassee, Florida, which meant overcoming how ICFs are viewed. ICF wall systems have been around since World War […]