By Jessica Schultz
While the vapor barrier was installed over the sheathing on the exterior of our building, our focus turned to the inside.
By Jessica Schultz
January saw the arrival of our Alpen windows! With the delivery came and exciting riddle for the project team and our staff. What were these balloons attached to each window?
By Jessica Schultz
By Jessica Schultz
Work on the building in November included completion of conduit work in both the North and South wings through the Ecotone connector.
By Jessica Schultz
During the month of October, work at the site picked up momentum as two items that were on order arrived, allowing installation and subsequent building steps to occur. These items included: the grey water tank and pump, as well as the black HDPE conduit for our electrical service.
By Jessica Schultz
Living Building Challenge projects like our new building are daunting to design and construct – but created to make change. To fully appreciate the magnitude of work involved in this challenge, we are committed to educating through our building – what principles of nature are replicated in our building, what materials research is required, how do our choices impact our children and future generations. Opportunities for this education have now started and we are excited to be sharing the building with our community!
By Jessica Schultz
Concrete is one of the most widely used building materials in the industry, but is commonly known to be highly energy intensive, emitting green house gases during production, processing, and transportation. So why then would we use concrete in a super-green Living Building ChallengeTM building? The short answer is that there is still no other material currently on the market that matches the durability of concrete for the life of a building as well. Invented by the ancient Romans, concrete has been used for thousands of years in various formulations, and is one of the longest lasting building products over its expected lifetime.
By Jessica Schultz
This summer the footing and foundation work has been underway on our building, and is now mostly complete. Our staff and community have enjoyed seeing the project begin to physically take shape on the site. In addition to the pouring of concrete, waterproofing work has been completed around the basement in the north wing. Styrofoam insulation has been added around the entire foundation of both wings and soil has been back-filled around it, nearly completely hiding the footings.
By Jessica Schultz
When the concrete starts flowing there’s no denying, it’s, well… concrete! The footings for our building were finished last week by Big T Concrete with steel from Barker Steel, after much detailed site work. It’s fun to see both the building footprint and the basement taking shape.
By Jessica Schultz
Our new building site occupies an area of former apple orchard. Historically, orchards were commonly treated with chemicals to reduce pest organisms. In some of these orchards, chemicals such as arsenic accumulated in soils. This was the case at our new site and the Hitchcock Center believed strongly, that the accumulation of arsenic in the soil be remediated and our team went to work on a solution. During the past few weeks, the work has been in progress and is now complete.
Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax