NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM TO ORGANIZE
MAJOR EXHIBITION ON “GREEN” ARCHITECTURE

Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century to open in January 2003

WASHINGTON, D.C.— On January 17, 2003, the National Building Museum will open a major exhibition on “green” architecture, titled Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century. Green, or sustainable, architecture minimizes negative environmental impacts of building, promotes the efficient use of natural resources, and protects the health and well-being of its occupants. As defined in the 1987 Bruntland Report, green architecture allows us to meet our collective needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Through in-depth profiles of approximately 50 contemporary green projects worldwide, along with a broad examination of global ecological and economic forces, the exhibition will demonstrate the transformative powers of sustainable design — focusing on large-scale buildings such as skyscrapers, factories, stadia, apartment complexes, convention centers, shopping complexes, and other “megastructures.” Big & Green will be on view through June 22, 2003.

“Sustainable architecture is a potent new movement that could revolutionize the way our buildings and cities are designed and constructed,” said exhibition chair Douglas Durst, president, The Durst Organization, developers of green buildings in New York City. “This movement emerges from an increasing respect for our environment, combined with a continuing demand for new construction to meet the needs of urban and regional growth. And it recognizes — now more than ever — that energy must be used wisely and conserved.”

Green architecture became a worldwide cause in the 1960s and 1970s in response to growing awareness of environmental degradation and rising fuel prices. The first green architects focused primarily on single-family homes, although some promising work was done on other small-scale buildings. In recent years, architects have increasingly applied environmentally sensitive design strategies in large-scale commercial and public buildings. Several rating systems such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) developed by Building Research Establishment in the United Kingdom have been developed as criteria for evaluating these relatively new design approaches. Big & Green explores this new architecture from a design, historical, and technical perspective, presenting the work of architects, engineers, and developers who have discovered that ideas from the past, combined with new technologies, make large-scale sustainable building an imminent possibility.

“Big & Green will be the defining statement about where sustainable technologies are today and where they are headed in the future,” said exhibition chair Jeffrey Abramson, partner, The Tower Companies, builders of green buildings in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. “America’s large-scale buildings are using enormous amounts of energy, and, with continuing concerns about global warming, this exhibition will help focus national attention and dialogue on the importance of sustainable design. It will encourage leaders in the building industry to foster the much needed change in the way we build.”

Big & Green will make the concept of sustainability accessible through a variety of illustrations, photographs, drawings, models, structural mock-ups, and interactive components. The exhibition itself will be conceived and installed with sustainable principles in mind. It will be organized with an introduction followed by five main sections — Energy; Light and Air; Greenery, Water and Waste; Construction; and Urbanism — which represent the curatorial criteria for evaluating the projects in the exhibition.

The first main section, Energy, will discuss energy consumption — one of the most significant environmental issues today — involving large buildings and how it can be reduced. To address this critical problem, many architects are designing buildings that generate their own clean and renewable energy. In the unbuilt Turbine Tower project (1995), the Richard Rogers Partnership proposed the first multi-story office building with a wind-turbine to deliver power. The firm Fox & Fowle, with the Durst Organization, built 4 Times Square (1995 – 1999), a New York skyscraper that generates a portion of its electricity from the sun and other renewable sources. If built as planned, the energy-generating systems of the proposed Jets Stadium in New York, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, will provide power not only to the stadium complex but to the surrounding city power supply grid as well.

In the Light and Air section, Big & Green will explore the design approach, first developed in Europe, of natural illumination and ventilation through new technologies such as “double-skin” operable windows — a window type that lets in air and light, but keeps out noise and heat. The ideas presented in this section demonstrate how we may reduce our dependence on mechanical air conditioning and artificial light — reducing energy consumption and providing a more healthful environment for occupants. For example, the Eastgate building (designed by Pearce Partnership with Ove Arup & Partners) in Harare, Zimbabwe, use a thermal siphon technique — creating a natural form of air-conditioning. In Rockville, Maryland, the Tower Building utilizes high-efficiency, double-glazed windows that minimize solar heat gain while allowing light to pass through to the interior. While new strategies continue to be developed for buildings of unprecedented size, older strategies such as small floor plates to encourage cross-ventilation are being revived.

Greenery, Water and Waste illustrates the relationship between these elements, as architects attempt to curb water consumption, lessen waste water, and use natural plant materials to manage a building’s impact on its surroundings. In response to these problems, engineers and architects are collaborating to develop systems that collect the enormous volume of water that runs off large buildings for recycling as non-drinkable, but still usable “gray water,” which can be, for example, used to water plants. MVRDV’s Dutch Pavilion in Hanover, Germany, utilizes a water-reclamation system to distribute it throughout the building. Similarly, greenery can be used to treat the often chemically-saturated run-off before it is released into the surrounding environment, as with the San Bruno, California offices of Gap, Inc. designed by William McDonough + Partners, which boasts the largest “habitat” roof in the United States. In some instances, greenery and other living organisms can actually transform wastewater into drinking water. The effective use of greenery and well-designed landscapes can provide not only beautiful surroundings but also ones that protect the ecology of the natural environment.

The materials employed in constructing large-scale buildings — concrete, steel, wood, plastics, glass — all present environmental threats because of the large amounts of “embodied energy” used to fabricate and transport them, as well as the toxic chemicals used to make them more attractive, waterproof, or fireproof. In the Construction section, the exhibition considers the strategies that limit the environmental impact of the building process. The most obvious solution to these problems is re-using buildings that already exist. For the new headquarters of the National Audubon Society, Croxton Collaborative Architects redesigned an 1891 George R. Post building, greatly improving its energy efficiency in the process. When re-use is not possible, architects and engineers may choose to use materials that require little energy to produce and ship, are modular to reduce construction waste, are pre-fabricated to keep construction in factories and not on city streets, and that are made from non-toxic and renewable materials. Lloyd’s of London Headquarters (designed by Richard Rogers Partnership) and the Esplanade Condominium Apartments in Massachusetts (designed by Moshe Safdie and Associates, Inc.) are excellent examples of sustainable design, using pre-fabricated, flexible modules mostly manufactured entirely off site, a system that could be adapted in other areas according to local conditions.

The final section, Urbanism, will look at the ways in which cities are planned and how these processes influence our lives and the environment. Many current theories and practices in urban planning and design are focused on methods of sustainable development. For example, urban planners increasingly advocate that sustainable cities should integrate work and residential zones to allow people the opportunity to walk to conduct their daily lives. In another approach, T.R. Hamzah and Yeang’s master plans for cities rely on a mix of high-rise towers integrated with extensively landscaped parks. In addition, cities could promote their future health through laws and codes that encourage prudent development patterns. The green high-rise residential building 20 River Terrace, by Cesar Pelli and Associates, is the first to be designed under an ambitious set of new building guidelines developed by the local Battery Park City Authority in New York. These guidelines have been developed to create a full-fledged environmentally friendly precinct within the city.

Big & Green will illustrate that the integration of sustainable architecture into the design process can produce buildings that are not only environmentally-friendly and more healthful for occupants but that are also beautiful structures. Today, increasingly, sustainable architecture is efficient and ecologically responsible, as well as attractive.

Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century is made possible by lead gifts from Jeffrey and Rona Abramson and the Abramson Family Foundation, The Durst Organization, United States Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and United States General Services Administration Public Buildings Service. The exhibition chairs are Jeffrey S. Abramson, Douglas Durst, and A. Eugene Kohn FAIA RIBA JIA.

In cooperation with Princeton Architectural Press, the Museum is publishing a companion catalogue — Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century — featuring nearly 200 pages of illustrations and photographs. The catalogue is organized by the same criteria as the exhibition and includes the same projects. The introduction, written by Big & Green curator David Gissen, will give insight into the history of the sustainability movement. The catalogue’s collection of essays will be a survey of current thinking about sustainable architecture. With a preface by William McDonough, the essays are “The Air We Breathe” by Guy Battle, “Vertiscapes: The Skyscraper as Garden” by James Wines, Michael Braungart’s “Beyond the Limits of Sustainable Architecture: A New Material Sensibility for the Twenty-first Century,” and “Rethinking the Corporate Biosphere: The Social Ecology of Sustainable Architecture” by David Serlin. The book will also include interviews by Nina Rappaport with Richard Rogers of Richard Rogers Partnership, Kenneth Yeang of T.R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd., Robert F. Fox and Bruce Fowle, principals of Fox & Fowle Architects, and William Browning, senior associate of Rocky Mountain Institute, all of whom have exercised great leadership in the sustainable design movement. The glossary was written by Ashok Raiji, principal at ARUP. Funded in part by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the catalogue is designed by award-winning designer Paul Carlos and Urshula Barbour of Pure+Applied.

The exhibition is curated by David Gissen, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University. Alisa Goetz, curatorial associate at the Museum, will coordinate the exhibition. The exhibition is designed by Paul Carlos and Urshula Barbour of Pure+Applied, and James Hicks. A traveling version of the exhibition is currently under consideration.

A wide range of public programs will complement the exhibition, including lectures by Kenneth Yeang, a principal in the Malaysian firm, T.R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd., and author of Bioclimactic Skyscrapers; Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, architect of the British Pavilion for the Seville Expo in 1992; Sandra Mendler, AIA, sustainable design principal in HOK’s San Francisco office; and, Ashok Raiji, an engineer and principal in ARUP’s New York office. The Museum will also conduct public tours of award-winning sustainable buildings in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

Big & Green is made possible by PATRONS: Jeffrey and Rona Abramson and the Abramson Family Foundation, The Durst Organization, United States Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and United States General Services Administration, Public Buildings Service, Office of the Chief Architect; SUPPORTERS: James G. Davis Construction Corporation, Johnson Controls Foundation, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC, Miller & Long Co., Inc., and Turner Construction Company; CONTRIBUTORS: Boland Trane, Envision Design PLLC, Forest City Enterprises Charitable Foundation, Fox & Fowle Architects, Josef Gartner GmbH, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, The Green Buildings for a Sustainable Future Coalition (Atlantic Station; Belmar, A Continuum Partners Development; DestiNY USA; Iowa Environmental Project; Lousiana Riverwalk), Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Herman Miller Inc., and Perkins & Will; FRIENDS: Albanese Development Corporation/Northwestern Mutual Life, ARUP, Boggs & Partners, BP Solar, EDAW, Inc., Gannett Co., Inc., Gensler Family Foundation, Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, Inc., Montgomery Land Development, Inc., PEI COBB FREED & PARTNERS Architects LLP, Cesar Pelli & Associates, Moshe Safdie and Associates Inc., SIGAL Construction Corporation, SmithGroup, Inc., Robert A.M. Stern Architects, and Syska Hennessy Group; ASSOCIATES: CB Richard Ellis, Inc., The Clark Construction Group, Inc., Croxton Collaborative, Kishimoto.Gordon PC, and Utility Systems Construction & Engineering, LLC; DONORS: Bergey WindPower Co., Expanko Cork Company, Carl M. Hensler Consulting Services Co., Kiss + Cathcart Architects, Lees Carpets, Lerch, Early, & Brewer, Chtd., Maryland Applicators, Inc., MCLA, Inc., Morphosis Architects, Smislova, Kehnemui & Associates, P.A., Tate Access Floors, Inc., TimberGrass Fine Bamboo Flooring & Panels, and TOLK, Inc.

The National Building Museum is America’s premier cultural institution dedicated to exploring and celebrating architecture, design, engineering, construction, and urban planning. The Museum is located at 401 F Street NW, Washington, D.C. Museum hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm. Admission is free. Museum Shop and Café. Public inquiries: 202/272-2448 or visit www.nbm.org.

For Immediate Release: October 25, 2002

Media Contact: Jill Dixon, 202/272-3606
Kristi Dangoia, 202/272-2448, ext. 3109