TUESDAY, DECEMBER 02, 2008

St. Olaf College's Regent Hall anticpates LEED Platinum certification

by Walter Kovacs
Minnesota

A rendering of Regents Hall.

The 200,000-square-foot Regents Hall of Natural and Mathematical Science that opened this fall at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., will be the first university building of its size to earn LEED Platinum certification if all goes as anticipated.

The $63 million structure, designed by Holabird & Root and built by Boldt Construction, will save enough energy every year to power over 250 homes annually. It is the first science facility in the United States designed to incorporate water-based reactions to decrease lab waste and the need for air conditioning.

The building's slanted roof and storm water system manages runoff and the furniture, tables and benches are handcrafted from the construction site.

The original plan for the building called for LEED Gold certification but the sum total of the green features and sustainable attributes elevated the building to a potential Platinum certification.

Regents Hall features 26 teaching labs, 17,000 square feet of student-faculty research space, seven tiered classrooms, 11 flat-floored classrooms, eight seminar-style rooms, five dedicated computational rooms, an 8.000-square-foot science library, group study spaces and informal gathering spaces.

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