Portland firms win design-build competition for construction of Calif. State Univ.green building

Portland-based Swinerton Builders and Danco Builders of Arcata, Calif., have teamed up to construct the first green building to go gold in California State University's 23-campus system.

Working as a joint venture called Danco-Swinerton, the two companies, along with Portland-based Yost Grube Hall Architecture, won a design-build competition for the five-story Behavioral and Social Sciences Building at Humboldt State University in the northern California community of Arcata.

Other members of the design-build team are KPFF Consulting Engineers, Lang Hansen Landscape Architects and Interface Engineering.

Construction will start next spring on the building, which is scheduled to open Spring 2007 as a home for 10 departments and the CSU Center for American Indian Studies.

The 89,000-square-foot concrete and steel building will feature glass-fiber-reinforced panels and cast-in-place elements.

The wheelchair-accessible building also will have bicycle parking and showers for cyclists.

The most important feature of the building is the LEED gold rating that we will achieve, said project architect Ben Hufford. It is an environmentally friendly and sustainable building that will reach an environmental standard that no other Cal State building has achieved.

The gold standard that Hufford refers to is the second highest of four ratings in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program coordinated through the U.S. Green Building Council. The program offers a national standardized system to evaluate the degree of sustainability, including renewable and environmental features, used in new and renovated buildings.

The Humboldt State building will feature natural ventilation and low-emissive materials for healthier air quality. A stormwater recovery system will use two 5,000-gallon tanks to harvest rain for flushing and irrigation and integrated solar photovoltaic panels will generate electricity from sunlight.

More than half of the wood used in the building will be certified as sustainably grown, and the builders will recycle 75 percent of the project's construction wastes, Hufford said.

This is the second try for the project. A previous start became bogged down by community objections that included concerns that the building's location - which at the time was planned for a hilltop site - would overwhelm nearby houses.

Yost Grube Hall's winning design moved the building further from the street and shifted the site so that the least imposing features of the building faced residential areas, Hufford said.

The build-design team also repositioned the building to give it south- and north-facing windows to capitalize on natural lighting.

The new CSU Center for American Indian Studies was an important part of the project, Hufford said. An earlier design placed the center inside the five-story Behavioral and Social Sciences Building. The location, however, drew complaints from groups worried the center would not have its own identity.

So, Yost Grube Hall moved the center outside into its own building with a design that reflects traditional Native American meeting lodges. The heart of the center is its octagonal, theater- in-round-type Intercultural Communications Forum.

The forum features tiered wood bench seating and an overhead central skylight symbolizing a lodge chimney hole. Nearby are offices, a gift shop and a market for American Indian art and products. A canopied walkway links the center to the larger Behavioral and Social Sciences Building.

Before construction begins, the contractors must move the Campus Center for Alternative Technology, said Swinerton project manager Chad Nielson.

The CCAT is a live-in demonstration home and educational center for basic green building and conservation.

It's in an old two-story home with a greenhouse and adjacent terraced gardens, all of which must be relocated, Nielson said.