Office of Public Relations — Newsroom
News Release
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Tonya Ewers, 303.315.6374, pager 303.266.0941, Tonya.Ewers@ucdenver.edu
University of Colorado Denver Master of Architecture Students Win Four of Five Top Awards in Regional Green Building Design Competition
First place winners to participate in the national competition in November
DENVER (Aug. 14, 2008) - For the third consecutive year, University of Colorado Denver College of Architecture and Planning students have won four of the top five awards in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Natural Talent Design Competition for the Western Region. The four teams won a total of $9,500 in prize money, including the first place team who won $6,000 and who will compete at the national level at the 2008 Greenbuild International Conference & Expo to be held in Boston in November.
“With this remarkable string of wins in the U.S. Green Building Council’s design competitions over the last three years, the UC Denver College of Architecture and Planning students continue to demonstrate their regional and national leadership in sustainable design,” said Mark Gelernter, dean of college. “Ideas like these are helping our society to conceive of healthier, more sustainable buildings, neighborhoods and towns.”
The UC Denver College of Architecture and Planning (CAP) master’s-level students created their designs in the Advanced Greenbuilding Studio under the direction of Fred Andreas, AIA, LEED AP, assistant professor adjunct of Architecture at UC Denver.
“There is a fundamental paradigm shift in architecture design and planning to that of a more green, higher-performing design community,” said Andreas. “The UC Denver College of Architecture and Planning has been focusing on sustainability for the past 15 years and has had a role in creating and defining the direction architecture is going. The students, faculty, architects and planners at the university level are collectively pushing this conversation and developing the new science behind green building design.”
USGBC's Natural Talent Design Competition provides applied learning experience in the principles of integrated design, sustainability, and innovation, all of which are components of the LEED® Green Building Rating System. The USGBC Competition, run by the Emerging Green Builders Committee—a consortium of students and young professionals dedicated to becoming and recruiting the future leaders of the green building movement throughout the country—hosts a yearly competition seeking the greenest building solutions. The competition focuses on unique design solutions that develop innovative green architecture through specific and quantified emerging technology.
This year’s Colorado project called for an innovative green architectural design to expand the current home of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado located at 1536 Wynkoop Street in lower downtown Denver. This high-profile project focused on zero net energy strategies—the designs yield a building that can produce energy at a level equal to or greater than the amount of energy it consumes—for a 130,000 square foot, eight-story mid-rise building in historic downtown Denver. All of the projects featured 100 percent passive heating, cooling and lighting designs integrated with renewable energy strategies.
The actual project will be built utilizing many of the concepts developed by the students in the CAP Advanced Greenbuilding Studio to achieve a LEED Platinum rating. The Alliance building will be only the second in the Western Region to achieve this rating, meeting the 2030 Challenge to construct new commercial buildings that have zero net energy.
University of Colorado Denver College of Architecture and Planning students on the first-place winning team were Bill Turner, Jill Reilly, and Anya Litvinova. Second place was won by Michele Williams and Tina Alberico; fourth place by Abe Jayson and Levi Hyland; and Alissa Wilson and Jennifer Vlasak took fifth place.
This year, 41 participants entered the Western Region USGBC Natural Talent Design Competition. The Greenbuilding Studio, developed and taught each year by Andreas, has swept the Western Region USGBC Competition for the last three years; each year the CAP Studio’s students have won four of the top five slots including a National Honorable Mention in 2006.
The College of Architecture and Planning is among the largest colleges of architecture and related design and planning disciplines in the United States. Located on the University of Colorado Denver’s downtown campus and the University of Colorado-Boulder, CAP brings together faculty, students and practitioners who share common pursuits in communities of interest including: emerging practices in design, sustainable urbanism, the creation of healthy environments and the preservation of cultural heritage. CAP is one of 13 schools and colleges at UC Denver. The University offers more than 100 degrees and serves more than 28,000 students in Metro Denver and online. For additional news and information, please visit the UC Denver newsroom.
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