As the new home for the Nicholas School of the Environment and the hub of all environmental activity on campus, Environment Hall will stand as a bold statement of Duke’s commitment to leadership in forging a sustainable future through research, education and practice. When it opens in spring 2014, it will bring together our interdisciplinary community of faculty and students, currently situated throughout the Durham campus, under one roof. The new space will foster a collaborative spirit of inquiry that will enhance our understanding of how the natural world and humanity interact and enable us to use that understanding to find sustainable solutions to the environmental problems of today and tomorrow.
This new 70,000-square-foot structure at the center of Duke’s West Campus will meet the highest standards of sustainability and energy efficiency and will operate as a living laboratory for aligning human behavior, functionality and environmental stewardship. With much-needed space for classrooms, student study areas, computer labs, faculty and staff offices and meeting rooms, and an environmental arts gallery, it will be an inspirational venue for our world-class faculty and students to interact, learn and apply their skills and knowledge. As one of the first programmatic buildings on the Duke campus to be certified LEED Platinum and meet high benchmarks for sustainable design, construction and maintenance practices, it will serve as a model for other construction, at Duke and beyond.
The outdoor landscape will be equally bold, meeting the guidelines of The Sustainable Sites Initiative™ – a national effort, similar to the LEED Green Building rating system program for buildings, and led by the American Society of Landscape Architects and its partners. Sustainable sites use less energy, water and natural resources; generate less waste; and minimize the impact on the land compared to traditional design, construction and maintenance techniques. Duke’s Sustainable Sites Initiative™ can even give back to the environment by cleaning the air and water, restoring habitat and biodiversity – all while providing significant benefits to the immediate site and surrounding Duke University community.
Most importantly, Environment Hall will support and enhance Duke’s highly ranked educational programs that prepare future leaders of consequence in environmental science, policy and management. The high-tech, 120-seat Great Auditorium will, for the first time, give the Nicholas School community a single space large enough to accommodate our growing classroom needs. Flexible classrooms, a rooftop garden that serves as an open-air laboratory, an organic orchard and outdoor plaza, and many other common areas indoors and out, will provide extraordinary opportunities for teaching, learning and the exchange of ideas. Because this building is a living laboratory, all of its features – from the rooftop solar panels to the rainwater recycling and natural light systems – will be “wired” into an advanced monitoring system that continuously senses and communicates environmental conditions and resource use within the facility. The results will not only enable us to optimize the performance of Environment Hall, but through human experiments and sharing of our data, we will collaborate with others at Duke, and well beyond the campus, to find ways to optimize building performance and minimize carbon emission.
For naming opportunities or to make a contribution to the new Environment Hall, please contact Mike Gulley in the Office of External Affairs at michael.gulley@duke.edu or 919-613-8187.
