For background details regarding this teleconference, and access to other segments, click here.
Presenters: Bruce McLean Haxton, BMH Architect (architect); Rick Cantwell, Odell International (design/build program manager); and Tom Kubala, the Kubala Washatko Architects (architect for high performance buildings)
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Science park site plan. 2011 image courtesy of Bruce Haxton and Tom Kubala |
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Haxton: This project is a research paper that was presented at the International Association of Science Parks (IASP) World Conference 2011, in Copenhagen. I will just describe to you how it originated and how the design developed. You can read more about the architectural and engineering concepts in greater detail in the research paper that was distributed to the conferees.
The real focus on science park sustainability started in 2009, with the Haxton-Meade research paper for the IASP World Conference, Raleigh, North Carolina. This paper dealt with a science park sustainable strategy worldwide. In the 2010, Haxton, Peter Why and Russ Drinker developed a research paper for the IASP World Conference in Korea regarding the net zero energy concept applied to science parks.
This year's submission for the IASP World Conference, dealt with the actual prototype design for a green net zero energy life style science park. This effort is the merging of the net zero concept with a science park concept called "lifestyle science parks," which means a "live, work, play, and educate environment." Science parks are science communities—usually right next to universities, where they are commercializing the intellectual knowledge of the university.
We did a detailed analysis of Masdar in Abu Dhabi, Arizona State University Science Park, MIT Science Park, and Centennial Campus Science Park at North Carolina State University and really tried to combine the best parts of each one of these into a design. We also looked at 14 walkable cities and integrated their best concepts into our science park prototype design. The most memorable was the village of St. Nicholas, Crete, with its cafes and restaurants adjacent to a water feature. This really gave us the idea of the central water element focus. Also contributing to the central water feature was the feel of the harbor and waterside restaurants and cafes of Mykonos, Greece.
Other strong concepts came from San Antonio River Walk; from Arizona State University Science Park for its water catchment/water amenity; from the Madison, Wis., State Capitol market square and art festival; from Honolulu Hawaii Medical University for water cooling concepts; from Santorini, Greece, for its urban walk to the village center; from the Ulm, Germany, market square; from Rhodes, Greece, for its central piazza; from Salt Lake City as a new "life style city center"; and from the piazza and beaches of Cascais, Portugal.
The site consists of an ~1,100-acre development at the heart of which is a university campus and village center, which includes campus buildings, student housing, restaurants, cafés, shops, offices, a K-12 school, hotel/convention center, and consolidated parking structure—in other words, everything that a university campus needs.
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Village center/university campus. 2011 Image courtesy of Bruce Haxton and Tom Kubala |
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The village center has pedestrian paths that come from the housing, research and recreation areas. They enter the campus/village under the village loop road, thereby making it much safer than crossing the roadways. These pedestrian paths enter into pedestrian paths and piazzas lined with shops, cafes and restaurants. These pedestrian ways coordinate with the main pedestrian promenade which is at the water front, very similar to the walkway/promenade at St. Nicholas, Crete. This promenade functions as the circulation around the water feature. Along the promenade, water side, are four sand beaches similar to those found in Cascais, Portugal.
The entire university campus/village is surrounded by a little loop road, with vehicular access to the village center and access to the larger loop road. The water feature at the center of the Village is about 900 ft in diameter, just about the size of the water feature at Mykonos.
So it's a walkable city. such that you can actually live in one portion and walk to or from the university campus/village center in about 10 to 15 min, very similar to what you walk in Santorini in the Greek Islands. The idea was to live in those housing areas within the Science Park and walk, bike or use an electric cart go to work or various parts of the park. There are six major housing areas. These have at their center, recreation and community functions. Just outside the housing areas are gardens for growing food.
Therein lies one of the truly energy-saving features: no commuting to work. Just walk to work, walk to the village, walk to school and walk to the university campus/village in the evening for restaurants and cafes.
What you see here is really a very tight knit planning design. Not quite as tight as what Bill O'Dell had showed with a similar program for KAUST (link to article 2), where theirs is very tight urban area of 100 acres. Our scheme actually has ~1,100 acres, very similar to the Centennial Campus at Raleigh.
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Birdseye perspective of housing and village center. 2011 Image courtesy of Bruce Haxton and Tom Kubala |
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Surrounding the village center is a recreational area of a golf course. The golf course has a club house, pool, driving range, practice chipping hole, and support facilities, similar to any good golf course. The golf course consists of 18 holes with three "water holes" and an additional eight adjacent to the water amenity.
The next zone out from the village center/university campus consists of university laboratories and technology incubators. These technology incubators are closest to the university for easy access, by both students and university professors. The close proximity of the technology incubators to the university will be helpful for professors and students that need to be working in both areas. The commercial laboratories are the furthest from the university campus/village areas.
There are pedestrian paths similar to those at Arizona State University Science Park. These flank the water catchment/water features in the research areas. The walkways proceed along the water’s edge down to the village center/university campus. Another set of pedestrian paths run perpendicular to those along the water features. These permit easy access to the commercial laboratories to and from the housing.
Please refer the research paper for the Energy Use Intensity (EUI) information for commercial, university, housing, and all other building uses. There are 60 laboratory sites; each site was independently designed to accommodate specific EUI. We planned for a broad range. Each quadrant of the science park has a range of EUIs that are in a modified bell curve. The entire park has the summation of each quadrant of EUI, so the project has been thoughtfully analyzed from a EUI perspective.
At each laboratory site are PV arrays that cover the laboratory roof, covered parking, and ground-mounted solar system. Note that the laboratories in the site have their long axis in the east-west direction to accommodate natural daylighting and reduce solar heat gain.
The laboratories are 60-ft wide to accommodate natural daylighting, with the offices toward the center of the complex. The roofs would be tilted toward the sun to enhance solar collector performance.
The laboratories and most other buildings within the park have deciduous trees planted on the east and west building faces to reduce solar heat gain during the summer and allow solar heat gain during the winter months.
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Grade-level view: Water’s edge entry to the village center. 2011 Image courtesy of Bruce Haxton and Tom Kubala |
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The cooling and heating systems are described within the text of the research paper, but it essentially is based on net zero energy, water and waste concepts. We're are taking the water, catching it on site, utilizing that as water amenities and cooling the buildings with the same water.
One of the prime concerns that we've had is zero waste; so we're anticipating achieving this in a number of ways. The biodegradable waste will be diverted to compost for gardening near the housing. The recyclables will be sorted and taken to a cogeneration area for recycling. Those materials that cannot be recycled will be used in the cogeneration facility in the lower right hand portion of the site. The sewerage is anticipated to be taken to the perimeter of the site and treated by turning the matter into algae to ultimately become fertilizer for the surrounding agricultural area.
What we’re trying to approach is a closed environmental system, very similar to the concept that you would find at the International Space Station where they take the used elements and then recycle them into a closed system.
This 1,100-acre science park would probably have more of a agricultural catchment area where we’d produce fertilizer for the farms in that local region. The local food production capability is important since two-thirds of the cost of food production is the transportation to get the food to market. The science park would then act as the center of a much larger regional living, working, education, recreation and food production zone. Further study is needed to fully explore the net waste and net food concepts.
I didn’t get into a lot of the engineering and energy systems information, but you can read that in the research paper.
One side note is that modern science parks often need to accommodate nanotechnology research. We have taken this into consideration, and at the four corners of the site are the wind generators. We are trying to locate vibration-producing, wind/electrical generating systems toward the perimeter of the park to reduce the vibration to the laboratory areas. We have also located the microwave communications system at the heart of the university campus village center, again to reduce EMI interference to the research laboratory areas. A detail vibration analysis and electromagnetic interference analysis needs to be done to assure that the nanotechnology research is not compromised.
