Cambridge City Hall Annex goes green
MMA Innovation Award winner - award presented on Jan. 8, 2005
The renovation of the Cambridge City Hall Annex demonstrates that “green” buildings need not be built from the ground up. While adding such energy-saving features as solar power and a thermal heating system that pumps water from hundreds of feet below ground, designers also paid keen attention to the building’s past.
In the late 1890s, the building, then a grammar school, had undergone a renovation that according to a city report at the time included “large skylights … placed over each stairway which throw light down to the first-story corridors” as well as state-of-the-art heating and ventilation systems. Many of the most attractive features, including brick parapets, were lost in the years after the building was converted to municipal use in 1939.
The parapets have now been restored, and skylights figure prominently. A high-ceilinged conference room on the fourth floor, for example, includes an arching skylight roughly the size of the conference table, with louvers that can be adjusted mechanically. Utmost use is made of natural light throughout the building, with large vertical windows made possible by the original school building design, transoms that spread light among adjoining offices, and lamps that adjust automatically to changes in external light. Three-quarters of the workstations in the building receive daylight, and at least 90 percent have views to the outside, according to John Bolduc, who works in the building as an environmental planner in the city’s Community Development Department.
Other interior features include a broad stairway near the entrance of the building that leads up to an expanded art gallery, and a series of murals on themes related to the departments located in the building. (One of the murals, intended as an allegory of the sometimes noisy community planning process, shows cackling birds perched among thorny leaves.) There is also a bicycle storage area that includes a shower room as well as two staff bikes available for use during the business day.
Cambridge, seen as a leader in promoting green development, mandates that all city projects follow the guidelines of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. According to a 2003 study by the Green Building Council, devoting 2 percent of a project’s total construction costs to green technology will result in savings over a 20-year period of more than 1o times the amount that is spent on the technology.
The renovation of the City Hall Annex cost about $10 million, with $337,500 coming in a grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s Renewable Energy Trust, according to city officials. Since the building reopened early last year, energy and other operating costs have been reduced by 40 to 50 percent.
Bolduc cited less obvious benefits as well, including fewer anticipated sick days, thanks to better air quality and improved working conditions, and a more productive workforce.
“As an employee myself, I can say that people are pleased with the renovations,” he said. “It’s a much more pleasant place to come and work.”
For more information, call Cambridge’s Community Development Department at (617) 349-4600.
Innovation award judges
Judges for the awards were Northeastern University law professor Peter Enrich and Northeastern political science professor Bruce Wallin.
Written by MMA Associate Editor Mitch Evich
