Ordway Campus honored at 2004 Northeast Green Building Awards

View of Ordway Campus

Winners in the Small Buildings category may be seen at NESEA.

Green Building Awards highlighted at SolarAccess

March 10, 2004

Contacts:
Michael Ernst or Joe Hackler
(508) 540-9900

The Ordway Campus of the Woods Hole Research Center has received a first prize in the 2004 Northeast Green Building Award in the “places of work (small buildings)” category. The award was given by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) at its 29th annual conference held Thursday at Boston University.

The Northeast Green Building Award is an annual competition recognizing outstanding achievements of high-performance architecture in the northeastern United States. The competition was open to new construction and renovations completed in the northeastern U.S. prior to January 2004. The award categories included residences, places of work, places of learning, solar electric buildings, and student projects.

It is a blind-juried competition, with architect and owner information withheld from the applications, and judged by a distinguished panel of architects and engineers. Among Center staff directly involved in the building project were research associate Joseph Hackler and computer systems administrator Michael Ernst, who collaborated on the application for the NESEA award.

The Woods Hole Research Center’s headquarters at 149 Woods Hole Road was completed in March of 2003 and was designed by William McDonough + Partners of Charlottesville, VA. The structure employs a number of innovative designs and systems designed to create a “high performance” building that operates without the onsite combustion of fossil fuels. The Center, whose mission is in part to combat global warming and environmental degradation, intends the building to serve as a model for 21st century construction, demonstrating that buildings can serve the needs of their inhabitants without causing harm to the environment.