Curved balconies inspired by the twisting form of DNA jut out over the central courtyard-like commons of the University of South Dakota’s new Sanford School of Medicine building.

The creativity used in the design of the building and other environmentally-friendly structures like it in the region are helping to break the cookie cutter mold and create unique architecture that blends in with the natural environment.

The green building movement has gained national prominence and awareness, but it is still taking root in North Dakota, South Dakota and western Minnesota. While the general principles of sustainable design have been in use in the region for decades, more local building projects are incorporating green features into their designs.

Green components like geothermal heating and cooling systems, the use of daylight and lighting controls, recycled and locally-produced materials, native prairie grass landscaping and storm water retention systems are only a handful of the sustainable design elements being used in building projects throughout the three-state region.

 

“It’s a design revolution,” said Stacey McMahan, a principal and the green studio director with Koch Hazard Architects in Sioux Falls, which designed the Sanford School of Medicine building. “It’s changing the industry.”

Twenty five buildings in Minnesota, most of them in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, have attained Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, an independent industry benchmark for green projects awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. North Dakota only has two LEED certified projects, including the new Turtle Mountain High School in Belcourt, ND, which recently received a LEED Silver designation. No buildings in South Dakota have been LEED certified yet.

 

But the region is starting to catch up. A total of 296 building projects in the three-state region had been registered with the U.S. Green Building Council and were in the planning stages or had started the process to become LEED certified as of early last month. There are 40 prospective LEED certified buildings in South Dakota, including the University of South Dakota’s new medical school building, and 15 potential LEED certified projects in North Dakota.

Great River Energy’s Maple Grove, MN, headquarters, which includes a working wind turbine visible to passing motorists on Interstate 94, is the first building in Minnesota and one of only about 120 worldwide to earn LEED’s highest designation, LEED Platinum certification.

 

“We’re a little more cautious in this part of the country,” said Kevin Flynn, president and owner of EcoDEEP, a St. Paul-based architecture and green building consulting firm. “We’re not as fast to jump on the bandwagon, but we’re getting there. A lot of people in the industry are becoming more aware of the principles and are incorporating them into their designs.”

 

GREEN GUIDELINES

 

The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED ratings are based on a points system for green building that awards projects that have accumulated enough points to be designated LEED Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum.

The U.S. Green Building Council also offers training programs for those in the building industry, allowing them to become designated as LEED Accredited Professionals or LEED APs.

 

Minnesota’s sustainable building standard — Buildings Benchmarks and Beyond or B3 — which took effect in 2004, is similar to LEED, but is more tailored to the climate and building materials of the Northern Great Plains. Unlike LEED, which offers a voluntary checklist to achieve certification, B3 consists of a list of requirements that must be met in the construction of all new state-funded buildings. Starting next February, B3 requirements must also be followed in all major renovations of state-funded facilities in Minnesota.

 

Minnesota’s B3 standards will be updated to reflect a new set of guidelines in development that are intended to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions by lowering energy use in new buildings and major renovation projects in the state. The non-binding guidelines, which will be linked to utility incentive programs, aim to reduce carbon emissions by 60 percent in new buildings by 2010 and to make future buildings in the state carbon neutral by 2030.

South Dakota’s state legislature passed new high-efficiency energy standards last July requiring the construction of all new state-owned buildings and major renovations meet LEED Silver guidelines or comparable sustainable building standards, although some projects can be exempted.

 

The University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University have taken sustainable design into consideration more when planning new building projects on their campuses. The University of Minnesota system is also in the process of establishing requirements for new buildings, which will include some environmental aspects.

“Green building will eventually just be the normal way of doing business like the (Americans with Disabilities Act) has changed the way buildings are built,” said Aaron Faiman, a mechanical engineer and a LEED AP with Ulteig Engineers, which has offices in Fargo, Bismarck, Sioux Falls, Detroit Lakes, MN, Minneapolis and Denver. “It will just become the normal way of putting up a building.”

 

MORE DEMAND

 

The value of green building construction starts in the U.S. increased from $10 billion in 2005 to more than $36 billion last year and is projected to total between $96 billion and $140 billion by 2013, according to a recent report by McGraw-Hill Construction.

 

What is driving the green building boom? Sustainable building mandates, the influence of green standards like LEED and Green Globe, and increased environmental awareness have all played major roles. But for many businesses, the decision to go green is as rooted in their bottom line as a desire to save the planet.

 

A 2003 study performed for California governmental agencies found that investments in green buildings were repaid more than 10 times over.

 

Green building projects typically come with higher up-front materials costs. The additional cost of completing extra paperwork and documenting the building process while pursuing LEED certification can also total $20,000 or more. But Richard Graves, an architect with the Minneapolis office of the Perkins + Will architecture firm and a U.S. Green Building Council board member, said higher initial costs for materials like insulation and windows are quickly offset by smaller mechanical systems and cheaper operating expenses. Graves said energy savings and other decreased costs often pay off increased initial costs within three years. After that, the building’s owners will enjoy decreased operating expenses for the rest of the building’s lifetime.

 

“Owners are starting to get a broader sense of cost,” said Graves, a LEED AP. “They are not just looking at first costs. They are starting to look at operating expenses as well.”

 

Flynn of the EcoDEEP green building consulting firm said initial building costs might only represent 6 percent of the total cost of a building during its 30-year lifespan, with operations and maintenance making up the remaining 94 percent.

“One of the big myths out there is if you decide to go green, its going to cost you more,” Flynn said. “That’s not necessarily true. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to spend more on your building, it just means you’re going to spend it differently.”

 

ENERGY SAVINGS

 

A report compiled by the New Buildings Institute for the U.S. Green Building Council last year found that LEED certified buildings studied used 25 percent to 30 percent less energy on average than comparable commercial building stock.

“Overall, sustainable design is always going to be cheaper,” said Sean Ervin, a managing principal and LEED AP with Sioux Falls-based architecture firm TSP Inc., which also has offices in Rapid City, SD, Marshall, MN, Rochester, MN, Minneapolis, Marshalltown, IA, Sheridan, WY, and Omaha, NE. “It’s going to save maintenance costs and energy costs in the long run.”

 

The new Urban Plains Center in Fargo is estimated to save more than $100,000 in utility costs and up to 1 million gallons of water a year.

 

The arena is the first phase of the $44 million Urban Plains Center and Tournament Facility complex designed by ICON Architectural Group, which has offices in Grand Forks, ND, and Fargo, and developed by land owner Ace Brandt. The arena, which is going through the LEED certification process, incorporates geothermal well fields, motion-sensing lighting controls, reflective EPDM roofing, recycled plastic benches, counters and partitions, low-flow water reduction fixtures and is the first project in the state to use waterless urinals. The arena is part of a 330-acre master development and is adjacent to a 24-acre central park design that includes a 10-acre naturally-filtered pond.

JLG Architects, which has offices in Grand Forks, Fargo, Alexandria, MN, and Minneapolis, installed a geothermal heating and cooling system when it built a new school in Erskine, MN, more than a decade ago. When finished, the school’s heating and cooling costs for an entire year were the same as how much it used to cost to heat the former school for just the month of December. A second JLG Architects school built in Clearbrook, MN, also equipped with a geothermal heating and cooling system, has been estimated to save about $100,000 in energy costs a year.

“We’ve always felt that sustainability is important, mostly because of where we live,” said Lonnie Laffen, JLG’s co-founder and a principal in the firm. “The buildings in our climate use an enormous amount of energy compared to other areas of the country because it gets so cold here. The lowest cost we can make our buildings operate at and have the least environmental impact, the better.”

 

CHANGING EXPECTATIONS

 

More clients in the region are asking architects about green building and looking to make their buildings run more efficiently.

 

“The expectations of clients are changing,” said Flynn, whose consulting firm helped coordinate the LEED process for the Turtle Mountain High School project. “Now when they are asking for a building to be designed, they are asking for a more sustainable design. They aren’t necessarily seeking LEED certification, but they are looking for better buildings.”

Marvin Windows and Doors executives chose to use green building techniques in an office expansion project at the company’s Warroad, MN, headquarters. The company will seek LEED certification for the building project that will include daylighting, lighting controls and the use of some recycled and locally-produced building materials, cutting down on shipping costs.

 

“We’ve always worked hard to do the right thing and make the right choices in whatever we do,” said Susan Marvin, the company’s president.

 

“We wanted to employ environmentally-friendly processes. Usually what is good for the environment makes good business sense over the long run anyway.”

 

Michael Burns, president and principal of Michael J. Burns Architects of Moorhead, MN, said environmentally-conscious college students are also pushing universities to build more eco-friendly buildings. “They are almost demanding that the universities provide a strong sensitivity to it,” said Burns, whose firm designed a $10.6 million residence hall project that is slated to open on the University of Minnesota, Crookston campus this fall and is seeking LEED certification.

In addition to educational, governmental and office buildings, current green building projects in the region include health care and military facilities, a museum, border crossing station and private homes. A new terminal for the Grand Forks International Airport will use low-emitting paint and carpet, a storm water retention system and geothermal heating and cooling. The project, which JLG Architects and Ulteig Engineers are currently working on, will seek LEED Gold certification.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

 

Buildings account for 72 percent of the nation’s electrical consumption, 39 percent of the country’s primary energy use and 38 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Building construction also uses up 40 percent of the world’s raw materials, according to a 1995 Worldwatch Institute report.

Building better, more sustainable and efficient buildings not only benefits the environment, it can also save energy and conserve natural resources while reducing operating costs.

 

“It is definitely becoming more and more mainstream to think about sustainable design and the relationship with the built environment,” said Ganapathy Mahalingam, interim chair of North Dakota State University’s architecture and landscape architecture department.

 

Green buildings have also been found to improve employee productivity by creating a healthier and more stimulating work environment.

 

“If you can make even a small increase in productivity in your staff, that is an amazing return on investment,” said Flynn of the EcoDEEP consulting firm.

 

GREEN IN THE MAINSTREAM

 

Environmentally-conscious building practices have entered the mainstream and become more accepted, even in the generally conservative Northern Great Plains.

 

“I started pushing hard on this 15 years ago and people thought, 'Oh, he’s this tree hugger. What is he talking about?’” said Flynn, who is based in St. Paul. “It’s not that way anymore. Almost overnight people started saying, ‘This makes sense.’”

 

When asked about the change in perspective, Graves, an architect with the Minneapolis office of Perkins + Will, mentioned a recent TV commercial from IBM that depicts a manager who is skeptical about a green proposal from an employee. The manager says the plan might be popular with tree huggers, but that the people he reports to don’t eat granola — until he finds out the proposal could cut the company’s energy costs by 40 percent.

 

“That’s what you are seeing in the industry now,” Graves said. “It’s not just environmentalists. Green building is seen as good business.”

 

JLG has a group within the company that focuses on maintaining sustainability in the firm’s projects, offices and the community.

 

“It is part of what we do in every design project,” said Kevin Donnay, vice president and director of architecture of Widseth Smith Nolting, an architecture, engineering, surveying and environmental services firm with offices in Baxter, MN, Bemidji, MN, Crookston, MN, Alexandria, MN, Rochester, MN, Red Wing, MN, Grand Forks and Sioux Falls. “It is just getting more emphasis now. We talk about it more and push it more with our clients. Our clients are much more aware of it now.”

 

Not all clients and architects have embraced the green building movement, though.

 

It seems to me that there is not that much gray area,” said Dennis Hulsing, a partner in the Bismarck-based Ritterbush-Ellig-Hulsing architecture firm and the founder of Hulsing & Associates Architects in Dickinson, ND. “They are either really interested or they are totally disinterested.”

 

Architects, engineers and industry insiders say that like it or not, green building appears to be here to stay.

“I think this will become routine,” said JLG’s Laffen. “It won’t be news and it won’t be unique. But it’s not going away. It will just become an everyday practice.”