Top Ten Green Projects 2010

Tags:: Architecture

This week, the American Institute of Architects' Committe on the Environment (COTE) announced its Top Ten Green Projects. The program, in its 14th year, applauds structures that incorporate sustainable systems in its architecture, natural systems, and technology and extend beyond the skin of the building and use strategies that incorporate existing buildings, place the structures close to public transit systems, and more.

— Miyoko Ohtake

Project: Manassas Park Elementary School + Pre-K

Location: Manassas Park, Virginia

View: Outdoor classroom

Architect: VMDO Architects, P.C.

AIA summary: "MPES is fundamentally designed around the premise that people, especially children, cannot be expected to preserve or protect something they do not understand. As such, the school is conceived throughout as a teaching tool that shepherds children along a path of environmental stewardship. Inside and out, sustainable design is integrated with the elementary curriculum. Design decisions were made with the expressed goal of showcasing as many teachable moments as possible. Interior extended learning spaces offer dramatic and surprisingly intimate views of the neighboring mixed oak forest, while elementary classrooms face shady moss and fern-covered learning courtyards featuring “fallen” trees and other particularities of an eastern deciduous forest floor."

Photo by VMDO Architects.

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