Progress on the New Environmental Center

kellogg
Rendering of the new Environmental Center, viewed from the southwest

Our New Home

The pace of work has picked up at the new Environmental Center, which will include Kellogg House, the original home of Environmental Studies at Williams, and a new building, separated by a common entryway (http://env-center.williams.edu/).  The Center also will house the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives, a classroom and study areas, the Matt Cole Reading Room and a kitchen that opens onto a sunny patio and gardens.

Kellogg House is a wood frame structure that served as home for the first four presidents of Williams.  The old home is being transformed into an energy efficient building that will support an array of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) collectors and help to collect the precipitation that will serve as the Center’s water supply.  The Center will be surrounded by an edible landscape, including a small orchard, extensive plantings and a kitchen garden.

Our new environmental center is being designed to meet the Living Building Challenge, which is both a metric and philosophy for sustainable building and design.  Achieving LBC certification, which is a performance based rather than design based certification, requires, among other things, zero-net use of energy and water, “urban” agriculture, absence of harmful chemicals and materials and performance categories such as Health and Happiness, and Equity and Beauty. (LBC; https://ilbi.org/lbc); the finished building will have to demonstrate, for at least a year, that it is self-sufficient in energy and water and meets all the other performance categories.   The Building Committee has planned on extensive use of this exciting combination of old and new building, so meeting the energy and water self-sufficiency requirements will be both challenging and educational.   The Environmental Center will not be the first LBC building when it opens in late 2014 or early 2015, but it will be among the first and it will certainly be the first to attempt a historical renovation as part of the project.

Kellogg demolished
Beneath the clapboards Kellogg consists of planking over a post & beam frame

 

Progress has been rapid since Kellogg finally arrived on its new foundation in early winter.  Removing the clapboard revealed the original 18th century planks  (all images by Nicholas Whitman), and stripping the lath and plaster (18 tons of it!) from the inside exposed the original chestnut (?) posts and beams, as well as many generations of alterations, renovations and damage.  The attic looks like the inverted hull of a ship and there is no sign of insulation.  We wonder how the building was heated, where meals were prepared and where the president entertained faculty or students.

The new building, made of steel, polished concrete and wood, also will support PV panels and collect rainfall.  It will house offices, the classroom, study spaces and kitchen. Exposed pine beams in the ceiling were cut from trees that grew on the site and milled at Jay Healy’s (’68) Hall Tavern Farm in Charlemont. It should be a beautiful place to cook, eat and study.

-David Dethier, Edward Brust Professor of Geology and Mineralogy
All images by Nicholas Whitman

 

Plaster gone from the first floor! Piles of lath & plaster marks visible on hemlock planks
Plaster gone from the first floor! Piles of lath & plaster marks visible on hemlock planks
Panorama of Environmental Center construction site, 23 May 2014. View from south
Panorama of Environmental Center construction site, 23 May 2014. View from south