Mass timber, wood-fiber insulation, nontoxic finishes, cast-iron plumbing, bird-safe windows and hundreds of solar panels.
These are just some of the state-of-the-art, and sometime unique, elements that went into recently completed academic facilities designed to meet the world’s most rigorous standards for energy performance and sustainable construction techniques.
College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor built the 29,000-square-foot Davis Center for Human Ecology to passive house standards with a goal of achieving at least 80% reduction in energy consumption versus comparable code-compliant construction.
“It uses human beings as part of the energy and heat production,” says the college’s president, Darron Collins. “We want people in the building, because every person is a little 100-watt bulb walking around.”