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High Impact
The environment school's new building seeks to be
self-effacing in terms of its carbon footprint. But as a home for the school
and an improvement to Science Hill, it makes a big impression.
September/October 2009
by Mark Alden Branch '86
Mark Alden Branch '86 is executive editor of the Yale
Alumni Magazine.
Much of the advance buzz about Kroon Hall, the new
headquarters of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, was about
the green features that would minimize its energy use and carbon footprint. But
since Kroon was completed last spring, users and visitors have encountered a
building that is more conspicuous for its aesthetics and hospitality than for
its miserly energy use.
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After being spread out in nine buildings, the environment school is mostly under one roof.
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Kroon, located on Prospect Street between Osborn
Memorial Laboratories and Sage Hall, was conceived as an exemplar of environmentally
conscious design, a way for the environment school to "walk the talk" about
sustainability, according to Professor Stephen Kellert '71PhD, who helped inspire
the project more than a decade ago. As designed by the British firm Hopkins
Architects with Centerbrook Architects and Planners of Connecticut, the
building is a showcase both for the newest green technology (photovoltaic
panels to generate electricity, geothermal wells for heating and cooling,
rainwater recycling) and for timeless but underused sustainable-building
techniques (generous use of daylight, stone and concrete masses to help
regulate and retain heat). The architects say they expect Kroon to be
responsible for 540 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, 62 percent less
than a conventional building. The school will buy offsets—carbon savings,
available by the ton through investments in, for example, wind energy—to cover
the rest and make the building effectively carbon-neutral.
Yale facilities officials say it'll take at least a
year of "fine-tuning" before they can begin to assess its energy performance.
But the people who work in Kroon give it good reviews for reasons that have
little to do with the largely invisible green features. After being spread out
in nine buildings, environment school faculty, staff, and students are happy to
be mostly under one roof. "We're kind of a university within a university in
the sense that we have an incredible number of disciplines represented on our
faculty, so it is all the more important that people are interacting with one
another spontaneously," says Kellert.
"I was surprised what a difference a building can
make in your outlook on coming to work every day," says Amity Doolittle '99PhD,
a lecturer and research scientist at the school. "It's been really huge in
terms of bringing faculty together."
Students, too, are frequenting the building, especially the vaulted public spaces on the top floor that have become a kind
of living room for the school. "Every time I was there this spring there would
be dozens of students either studying or socializing," says Professor Gaboury
Benoit '76.
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The landscape of Science Hill has never received the level of attention lavished on the central campus.
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Besides what it has done for the environment school,
the Kroon Hall project has also improved the environment of Science Hill, whose
landscape has never received the level of attention lavished on the central
campus. The site where Kroon stands once housed a most ungreen power plant and
a network of loading docks, pipes, and utility lines. As part of the project,
the loading docks were reorganized underground, beneath a new courtyard. The
corner walkway through Osborn, which once led nowhere, now takes pedestrians
through the courtyard and up Science Hill. Further landscaping improvements are
planned for Sachem's Wood, the open space between Kroon and the Peabody Museum.
So far, complaints about the building are few. Benoit
says electrical outlets are not well placed, and not everyone is happy about a
system that tells people (via green or yellow signal lights placed throughout
the building) when they can open their office windows. And Kellert regrets
that, while the wood-paneled, light-filled top floor is "extraordinary," budget
cuts reduced the three office floors to "good but not great."
The building has mostly been praised by architecture
critics. James Russell wrote for Bloomberg News that the building "snuggles
gracefully amid stone-faced neo-Gothic neighbors. Its front-door plaza unites
adjacent forestry buildings into a handsome ensemble." In the Hartford
Courant, Philip
Langdon wrote that Kroon "pleases the senses" and that its top floor is "one of
Yale's best recent interiors—spacious, even grand, without being overwhelming."
But Langdon and others have questioned the choice of light-colored sandstone
for the exterior. Although the sandstone used on Kroon is the same stone used
on many central campus buildings, Science Hill is dominated by dark red and
brown stone. Langdon says the stone used for Kroon "undercuts the aesthetic
unity of Science Hill."
As for the building's energy performance, we'll just
have to wait and see. But Kellert is already hedging a little about whether the
estimates will prove accurate—for reasons the planners didn't foresee. Kellert
says students and faculty like the building so much they're spending a lot of
time there, using the lights and their computers. "The ironic thing is that
because the building is so popular, we may end up using more energy than
anticipated."  |
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