The Chesapeake Bay Foundation Building
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is committed to protecting and restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay. It does this through monitoring, research, community outreach, and publications. The foundation was scattered around Annapolis, Maryland, in various offices when the opportunity to build a new headquarters building on bay frontage property in Bayside, Maryland, a little south of Annapolis presented itself. The foundation decided that they should build a building that was as green as possible. They hired the Smith Group with the brief to create a building to sit lightly in nature. The list of desired climate responsive features included daylighting, passive solar heating, natural ventilation cooling, rainwater collection, composting toilets, local and minimally processed materials, low maintenance and indigenous landscaping, photovoltaics, solar hot water heating, high efficiency lighting, efficient HVAC equipment, and recycled building materials (Figure 19.1). The LEED rating system was just beginning. The owners and design team set out to achieve a LEED Platinum rating.
The site in Bayside was large. There had been a beach club on the site. The decision was made to locate the new building over the footprint of the preexisting building, which left most of the site to be conserved as woodlands and wetlands.
The building is oriented 17 degrees east of south so that the southern exposure is aimed slightly into the morning sun, when the air temperatures are usually lower, and away from the western evening sun, when the air temperatures are higher (Figure 19.2). Tom Eichbalm, the principal in charge of the design, chose this orientation because he remembered the lessons from Design with Climate by Victor Olgyay.
Parking for employees is located under the building on a concrete slab. Parking for visitors is located in front of the building and has a gravel surface. The guiding concept was to minimize rain water runoff. The slab under the building does not receive any rain. The gravel surface is porous to water penetration. The water that does run off the gravel parking lot is collected in a planted swale that collects the water and channels it through a filtration system before discharging it to the Bay.
FIGURE 19.1 The architect’s design concept sketch of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Merrill Building.
Source: Reproduced with permission of The Smith Group JJR.