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A Green Roof and a Green Building One Pittsburgh office building gets a green roof while a Philadelphia college building also goes green. Asters, day lilies and tall grasses are among the new plantings on the 22,000-square-foot green roof installed on Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield's Fifth Avenue Place office building in downtown Pittsburgh. The environmentally sustainable roof project, located on a roof terrace at the corner of Liberty and Fifth avenues, is expected to provide insulation that will lower the building's energy use by 12 percent and greatly reduce storm water runoff. The region's largest health insurer decided to install the green roof, consisting of 180 tons of soil and 25,000 plants on top of a waterproof membrane, as part of its energy conservation program.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 15, 2008 The Community College of Philadelphia broke ground on a $31 million expansion and redesign of its northeast Regional Center. The multifaceted project is expected to create the first nationally-certified, "green" college facility in Philadelphia. Both their NERC and Main Campus projects will include cutting-edge, green features and are expected to qualify for a silver rating under the LEED standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council for new construction. The NERC addition will have a green roof, geothermal heating and cooling systems, and will be designed to harvest the maximum amount of daylight possible to reduce the need to use lights. A storm water management system will collect rain water runoff from the green roof and from nearby residential homes for use in flushing systems in the NERC, reducing water consumption and managing storm water runoff from the campus and neighboring residences. The College's Main Campus project will include some of the same sustainable features, and will rely on a high-performance exterior skin to reduce energy use. Pennsylvania Environment Digest, October
10, 2008 For more information on green building, green roofs, and stormwater management, contact F. X. Browne, Inc. at info@fxbrowne.com |