Lane Community College Health and Wellness building

Synopsis - A Building with a Lung

Our practice is committed to exploring and devising new solutions for reducing energy consumption in the built environment. Often, this is an uphill battle against budgets, schedules and clients whose visions are shaped by traditional expectations. For the Health and Wellness Building at Lane Community College, the stars aligned perfectly: Proactive client, inspiring project and an experienced and integrated design team. Not only was this a chance for us to expand our sustainable design achievements, but also our design+research methodology.

The fact that our client is in the Leadership Circle for the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), dedicated to becoming carbon neutral, provided the leap of faith necessary to reach new performance levels. From the project’s inception, we teamed with an academic research group to employ extensive computational fluid dynamics and daylighting studies to develop the concept. This objective approach allowed us to produce a new passive design paradigm, calculating the means to elevate the users’ experience and conserve energy without adding to the building’s initial cost.

Our goal was to generate a building that functions as a living, breathing organism. The idea that emerged was that of a lung – bringing in fresh air, and exhausting warm, contaminated air. In order to be economically viable, however, it had to serve additional functions. The successful conclusion is a giant light well that ushers in daylight, as well as air, to all classrooms on both levels. Slicing completely through the building, this dramatic architectural gesture becomes the project’s organizing element – making sustainability the signature feature for health and wellness, and alerting students to their role as energy consumers. Adding value rather than offsetting an initial investment, this solution promotes the College’s carbon neutral mission and will provide significant energy cost savings for many years to come.