Clem Labine
Hooray! A High-Tech Building That’s Also Humane
Because I’ve gotten a reputation for being extremely cranky about contemporary design, it’s delightful to find a modern building I can actually rave about.
Kroon Hall, the new home for Yale University’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, is an all-too-rare combination of state-of-the-art sustainable design with good architectural citizenship. Designed by the British firm Hopkins Architects with Centerbrook Architects and Planners, Centerbrook, CT, the building is intended to be a showcase of green features that minimize its carbon footprint and also to provide a real-world demonstration of lessons being taught at the school.
But while achieving this primary goal, the architects kept in mind the people who use and pass by the building every day. As a result, Kroon Hall is attracting as much attention for its aesthetics and human-friendly elements as for its green technology. Faculty and students enthuse about how attractive and welcoming the place is for both work and study.
The building’s advanced technology includes solar photovoltaic panels, geothermal wells for heating and cooling, displacement air systems, a green roof, a rainwater harvesting system and cleansing pond and recycled and sustainable building materials. The building also incorporates a lot of traditional – but often neglected – energy-saving features such as generous use of natural daylight and ventilation, stone and concrete masses to help regulate and retain heat and wooden sun screens.
The architects expect Kroon will be responsible for 62% less greenhouse gases than an equivalent conventional building. The school will buy offsets to cover the rest and make the building effectively carbon-neutral. Yale is seeking a LEED Platinum Rating for the building from the U. S. Green Building Council.
Great care was taken to integrate the building with its surroundings – both natural and man made. Kroon Hall forms two new courtyards, reintroducing Yale’s historic collegiate urban fabric to Science Hill. The bottom floor has classrooms and a library that lead out to the lower courtyard. Loading docks previously on the site were reorganized underground, beneath a courtyard, and a walkway that formerly led nowhere now takes pedestrians through the courtyard and up Science Hill.
The designers of Kroon Hall were sufficiently self assured so they didn’t feel the need to create a starchitect-style “sculpture as building” or to flaunt the building’s technology. The architects designed a new facility that is people friendly as well as earth friendly. Wouldn’t it be nice if all new “sustainable design” were similarly humane?
Clem Labine is the founder of Old-House Journal, Clem Labine’s Traditional Building, and Clem Labine’s Period Homes. His interest in preservation stemmed from his purchase and restoration of an 1883 brownstone in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, NY.
Labine has received numerous awards, including awards from The Preservation League of New York State, the Arthur Ross Award from Classical America and The Harley J. McKee Award from the Association for Preservation Technology (APT). He has also received awards from such organizations as The National Trust for Historic Preservation, The Victorian Society, New York State Historic Preservation Office, The Brooklyn Brownstone Conference, The Municipal Art Society, and the Historic House Association. He was a founding board member of the Institute of Classical Architecture and served in an active capacity on the board until 2005, when he moved to board emeritus status. A chemical engineer from Yale, Labine held a variety of editorial and marketing positions at McGraw-Hill before leaving in 1972 to pursue his interest in preservation.
