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"The First Certified 'Green' Dormitory," The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 26, 2004, 2.

By WILL POTTER

PITTSBURGH — A century ago, clerks and captains of industry alike brought two clean shirts to their offices here each morning because air pollution would turn a shirt gray by midday. Pittsburgh still hasn't completely escaped its reputation as the Steel City, or the Smoky City. Factories, many of them shuttered beside mountains of industrial waste, still dot the banks of the three rivers.

Yet here, amid the city's aging smokestacks, is the first "green" dormitory in the country certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, a coalition of leaders from across the building industry whose goal is to produce environmentally responsible structures. The five-story, 260-bed building at Carnegie Mellon University, called New House, looks pretty much like the university's other buildings — only a plaque gives any hint that it is a landmark in environmental architecture on college campuses.

Carnegie Mellon doesn't plan to stop with one building. The university says that every new structure on its campus will go through the Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, known as LEED, in which an elaborate points system rates how friendly a building is to the environment. New House earned a silver ranking on the bronze-silver-gold-platinum LEED scale.

In a slowly recovering economy, as colleges continue to increase tuition, making such a commitment may seem like a risky endeavor. Isn't environmentally sustainable design more expensive? Housing officials at Carnegie Mellon say probably not.

The 71,400-square-foot building here cost less than they expected, partly because a poor economy prompted contractors to bid low. The building's construction totaled $9.5-million, but was budgeted at $10.8-million. The total cost, which includes construction, furnishings, and equipment, was $12.5-million, but was budgeted at $15-million.

The construction cost was just under $135 per square foot. New House is the first new dormitory at Carnegie Mellon in 12 years, so housing officials here can't compare the cost of building a sustainable dorm directly with one constructed using traditional techniques. The cost of new dorms on other campuses last year ranged from as little as about $100 to well over $250 per square foot.

"In the end, it didn't cost us that much to build a better building," says Tim Michael, director of housing services. The biggest expenses weren't for green design, he says, but to honor Carnegie Mellon's pledge to build what it calls "100-year buildings": sturdy structures meant to last.

And the university hopes that sustainable design will bring long-term savings. New House should use about 30 percent less energy than similar new dormitories that are not green. In its first year of use, utility costs for the dorm have been within budget, even in a very cold winter. For extra points toward the LEED certification, about 6 percent of the electricity used on the university's campus comes from wind power.

By the end of the spring semester, the university should know if it spent more money to have a green building. An engineering student is analyzing the costs of the building, piece by piece, and comparing them to those of a nongreen building.

New House is centered on "the environment" in the broadest sense of the term, says Natalie A. Gentile, an architect with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the building's designer. "Sometimes people focus in on the 'green' thing and forget about the personal environment."

The New House interior doesn't fit any stereotypes of the word "green." There are no granola dispensers in the hallways, no tie-dyed curtains, no racks for Birkenstock sandals.

It doesn't feel much like a dormitory at all. Serpentine walls make the hallways seem less institutional. The architects also designed the building to help its freshman residents feel like a close-knit group. The bedrooms are small, to encourage students to turn off their computers and socialize with other freshmen: Outside of the bedrooms the architects count 230 places to sit down and chat, for 260 residents.

There's even a window in the laundry room that lets students watch friends play a game of pool in a game room next door. The front-loading washing machines use 17 fewer gallons of water per load than typical machines, and students say they work well.

Insulated double-paned windows let sunlight in, without the heat, and reduce the need for lighting during the day. All the windows open. Each room has its own temperature controls, so students won't be tempted to waste energy by opening windows while the heat is on or the air-conditioning is going full blast.

Other environmental features of New House almost beg to be showcased. The cherry-wood doors could bear plaques that proclaim, "Certified by the Forest Stewardship Council to be sustainably managed and harvested." The custodian's closet could have a sign saying that all the cleaning products it contains are friendly to the environment and students' health.

But holier-than-thou environmentalism is absent from New House. Student environmental groups meet here, although this is not a special-interest dorm. Most of the residents didn't even know it was a green building when they signed up to live here.

"When I found out I was living here, I was a little concerned," says Jonathan Fasson, a senior who lives in New House and supervises its staff of residence-hall assistants. "What about hot water? And will someone hold a gun to my head to recycle?"

Mr. Fasson hasn't received any death threats, and he has had plenty of hot showers. He says he has sought out environmental information on his own. Carnegie Mellon housing officials say that's the idea behind the dorm: Residents learn about the impact of their consumption on the environment, and when they leave New House, they take that newfound environmental awareness with them and use it to change other parts of campus.

In a few months, New House will have a kiosk at its entrance with computer monitors that will show how energy is being used in the building. To pique students' interest in the environment, it will register every time a light is turned on or a toilet is flushed. And housing officials hope to bring speakers on environmentalism to the dorm regularly.

"Carnegie Mellon is sometimes known as an apathetic campus, but we're not apathetic," Mr. Fasson says. "Well, OK, we're apathetic. But we have a really large workload. New House makes environmentalism easier. It's all right in front of you."

Constructing a LEED-certified dorm was a learning process for the university, and in some ways an unlearning process. Planners had to break away from old models of building, and start thinking about issues like how construction materials were made and where they came from.

"We even had to ask the construction guys not to smoke on the job," says Peg Hart, senior project manager. "Boy, that was weird saying, 'OK, you guys can't smoke here anymore.' We never took a stand on it before."

Some of the LEED points were easy: By being an urban university, Carnegie Mellon is considered more sustainable than, say, a college in the suburbs. It is within walking distance of city buses, and the campus is bikeable, so no new parking lots had to be created for New House residents.

But other aspects of the building's LEED rating are less obvious. The concrete, for example, contains recycled fly-ash, a waste product of the burning of coal for electricity. The carpeting is made with half new and half recycled fiber.

And some parts of the sustainability equation can be difficult. Buying recycled materials is great, the Green Building Council says, but it is self-defeating if the materials are shipped across the country in trucks guzzling diesel fuel and spewing toxic fumes. New House got points for using steel, brick, insulation, and some other materials made within 500 miles of the campus.

And when a new building is complete, what happens to all the metal, lumber, plasterboard, and other scraps left over? On most construction sites, it all ends up in a dumpster. The building contractor for New House, though, sorted and recycled nearly 97 percent of the construction waste, saving over 200 tons of materials from going into a landfill. Some of it was even used on site, like the wood scraps that were shredded for mulch.

Instead of a black-tar roof and dark brick, which would contribute to the "heat-island effect" caused by urban buildings, New House uses light-colored brick and roofing materials. The light colors absorb less heat from the sun, so the building needs less energy to stay cool in the summer.

Walkways leading to the building are lined with about 50 shade trees. The trees, Marshall's ash and serviceberry, are native to western Pennsylvania, so they are tolerant of drought and frigid winters. They also don't need irrigation systems or fertilizers.

Some elements of green design involve cutting-edge technology, but many are actually returns to traditional, common-sense designs, says Paul J. Tellers, the university architect. And although some people say Carnegie Mellon is at the forefront of a new trend in green architecture, it's actually returning to its roots, he says.

"When the campus was planned 100 years ago, it wanted to be the college on the hill," says Mr. Tellers. "It was about being the ivory tower, the ideal campus, a beautiful monument in a smoggy, industrial city."