Manifesting Potential
Every endeavor can be an opportunity to develop place-sourced outcomes and effects that evolve our inherent collective capacities and deepen our relational understandings.
RE Farm Café at Windswept Farm
What started as a green building project, an off-the-grid, LEED certified, farm-to-table restaurant located on a working farm, a project that "does less harm", evolved into a systemic transformation of regional food production and consumption. Through the persistence of the owners Duke and Monica, a co-discovery process with key stakeholders aligning around the project’s Purpose and its effects in the Community, and years of regenerative thinking and design effort, the RE Farm Café at Windswept Farm was cultivated - a café nested in a farm, a farm nested in a community and regional food production and consumption system.
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Center for Sustainable Landscapes
Phipps Conservatory boasts the title of "most energy efficient conservatory in the world", and their ongoing commitment to sustainability is evidenced by their most recent project, the Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL). By utilizing an integrative design approach, this education, research and administration facility maximized efficiency and sustainability earning it "living" status under the Living Building Challenge (LBC), LEED NC v2.2 Platinum certification, WELL Building Platinum certification, and four stars under the SITESTM 2009 landscape rating system. In addition to being the first and only project to meet these four highest green certifications, CSL has been named by AIA COTE as a Top Ten Green Project of 2016 among other awards.
The Willow School Campus
"Excellence, Education, Ethics, and Ecology", is The Willow School’s mantra. A small, independent coeducational day school for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, The Willow School is committed to combining academic excellence and the joy of learning with experiencing the wonder of the natural world. It's campus is nestled on a 34-acre wooded site in rural New Jersey countryside, and the building and its surroundings are an integral feature in school’s curriculum. Children at The Willow School study the connections between mathematics, literature, history, and the natural world; observing ecosystem patterns and cycles; and sustaining a thriving natural environment.
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Neptune Township Midtown Community School
This centrally located, community-based, high performance K-5 school enhances and embodies curriculum as a “living textbook” for its 550 students and the community. A number of unique outdoor elements such as a rooftop science lab and an amphitheater invite learning, and community-oriented features include a parenting and tutoring center, inter-generational tutoring services and an adjacent renovated warehouse serving as an early childhood center.
Neptune Township Summerfield Elementary School
As the first LEED Gold certified public school in New Jersey, Summerfield Elementary takes a hands on approach to teaching and fostering an understanding of sustainable practices with students and the community. With an emphasis on Live Event Learning and indoor/ outdoor connections with the classroom, Summerfield utilizes the surrounding property’s 22 acres of wetlands, streams and nature trails as part of the curriculum. In redeveloping the Neptune Township site, the project team worked to revive the existing brownfield, planting local vegetation and implementing bio swales.
C-TEC Career and Technology Education Center
As the first LEED certified public school in Ohio, Licking County’s Career + Technology Center (C-TEC) earned state-wide attention. Central Ohio’s Green Building Council, along with a number of other state organizations, sent representatives to observe the school’s innovative leadership in action, and C-TEC still provides tours of the new facilities for numerous interested parties. When asked why C-TEC decided to go green, the school district facilities manager at the time, Rick Orr, tells people that the energy savings potential was a primary factor in C-TEC’s decision to pursue LEED certification.
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Southeast Regional Office Building
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (PA DEP) Southeast Regional Office Building (SROB) in downtown Norristown was intended by PA DEP to be Pennsylvania’s “Greenest Building”. In line with the building’s conception, it received the Environmental Design and Construction Excellence in Design Award Grand Prize in 2005 for government buildings.
The Winston Preparatory School New Classroom Building and Master Plan
The Winston Preparatory School’s Norwalk campus consists of 13.2 acres and seven existing buildings. 7group in collaboration with other Alliance for Regeneration members engaged Winston students, faculty, staff and the community in a highly interactive master planning process focused on regenerative design and development practices to create a campus Master Plan. Winston’s “educate the whole child” philosophy aligns with this regenerative/whole living systems approach in ways that allow the school’s curricula to be aimed at restoring and regenerating the health of a degraded site and to optimize the Winston experience as “a colony of learners”.
Capital Health Medical Center - Hopewell
The new full-service Capital Health Medical Center – Hopewell admitted its first patients in November 2011, replacing the healthcare system’s Mercer campus facility in Trenton, NJ, and is the state’s first hospital to earn LEED Gold certification. This suburban 165-acre site near Interstate 95 allows Capital Health to reach a larger population base than the previous urban location on a constrained site that rendered any expansion extremely costly and difficult.
Friends Center of Philadelphia
The renovation of the Friends Center, a National Historic Landmark in downtown Philadelphia, began as a modest capital improvements project. Now, by embracing the Quaker tenet that peace and justice depend upon restoring the Earth’s ecological integrity, the Center stands as a model of sustainable design after achieving the highest LEED Platinum (NCv2.1) score in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Philipsburg Office Building
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (PA DEP) Philipsburg office building is home to the Moshannon District Headquarters. In line with several other PA DEP office buildings, design of the Philipsburg office space prioritized energy and water efficiency, a high quality indoor air environment and the use of sustainable building materials for a total cost comparative to that of a conventional office building. In addition, the eight-acre building site is located on a former strip mine, of which less than three acres was allowable buildable area. Originally consisting mostly of shale chips, this site was converted to a native meadow in conjunction with facility construction.
Berks County Community Foundation
The Berks County Community Foundation (BCCF), a nonprofit whose mission is to promote philanthropy and improve the quality of life for the residents of Berks County, Pennsylvania, earned LEED Platinum (NCv2.2) certification for this headquarters and community conference center. The first LEED certified office building in the greater Reading area, this facility serves both to strengthen the Foundation’s presence in the community and to set an example of affordable sustainable building.