Renewable Energy & Sustainable Design in Buildings Awards

2012 COMMERCIAL & INSTITUTIONAL AWARDS
Institutional  |  Commercial  |  Residential Building Awards

Walking Mountains Science Center has been providing hands-on environmental education programs in the Vail Valley for over 13 years. It is a local non-profit organization that offers a diverse curriculum of programs utilizing new learning labs and outdoor classrooms to connect adults, families and children living in or visiting the Vail Valley to the natural world. Programs include guided nature hikes, children’s nature camps, guest speaker series, geology, ecology and more. Like many non-profit environmental educational organizations, the staff of educators leverages limited resources and teaching space to fulfill their mission. In 2006, a generous donation of five acres of land in the Buck Creek Valley in Avon, Colorado, combined with the vision of the Walking Mountains staff and board, set a design process in motion to create a new home for the organization.

Opened to the public in August of 2011, Buck Creek Campus serves as a prime example of sustainable design, and is a candidate for LEED Platinum certification through use of many sustainability strategies that strive to reduce energy demand, provide flexible educational space, and create a sense of place that is specific to this site and region. This 11,343 sf environmental education facility is comprised of 3 buildings housing classroom space, interpretive gallery, administrative work areas and support space. The buildings were intentionally separated to externalize circulation space and to connect users to the exterior environment.
A few of the high performance project features include:

• 33.4 kW PV array producing over 36% of campus annual electrical demand
• 70% reduction of energy over baseline in the Mountain Discovery Center
• 85% reduction over baseline in the Field Studies Base Camp
• Solar thermal collection
• 40.4% water reduction over baseline
• 80% reduction for landscape irrigation
• Straw bale + super-insulated double stud construction
• Highly efficient Colorado produced windows tuned for their location and orientation
• Locally harvested beetle-killed pine siding and trim
• Native plantings + vegetated roofs
• Wetland protection and on-site mitigation of impacted wetlands.