"We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
~Sir Winston Churchill
Last week, Ferguson Township performed its ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Public Works Building. As Township Manager Dave Pribulka said, "The quality of your facilities and equipment directly translates to the quality of services you provide and the quality of life in your community." It was a great day for the Township to celebrate a brighter, safer, environmentally sound, and long-term fiscally-sound investment.
The facility is designed for health & environmental performance. Its indoor air quality is excellent because of materials & natural light is ample throughout the building. The building systems, including its HVAC & lighting, are highly efficient. We oriented the building to the south to assist with heating, cooling, & lighting, and preparing it for rooftop solar which will be installed later. We anticipate that it will be a net zero energy building. Other aspects include natural stormwater as well as native planting and small-scale reforestation.
I couldn't be happier. In a way, I thought of this building as my baby. In 2016, I proposed to the Board that we require it to be designed to meet LEED Gold standards. That vote passed with a bipartisan unanimous 5-0 vote. The next year, as the bid went out, I authored the Township's climate action resolution which the Board also passed. We committed Ferguson to net zero emissions by 2050. We were the first municipality in Centre County to do that and one of the first in the Commonwealth. From 2017-2018 I worked with the architects, engineers, the Public Works staff, Board members, and other stakeholders to hone in on what we were looking for. I was selected to write the Basis of Design document which would inform the design and our goals.
It was an honor to write it. In keeping with our Board's stated policy commitments, I focused on the health, safety, productivity, and happiness of our employees. We wanted to ensure that we were living up to the Board's rhetoric on stormwater, on habitat, as well as beauty and fun. We favored durability balanced by health, responsible production, consumption, and disposal, and minimal embodied energy. Of course, given our stated climate commitments, the facility needed to be energy efficient and adopt solar energy. Every one of these emphases came to be in one way or another. The Basis of Design document was included in the time capsule to be opened in fifty years. Proud to have that as part of my personal, civic, and professional posterity.
Future generations should see this building, this investment, as part of a wave for sustainable development. We shaped the building in the hopes that it would shape us.
Thank you to the Township supervisors, designers, engineers, and staff who made this possible. You know who you are.