How Green Is Your House?
Lighting systems that save thousands of dollars in electricity bills, catchment systems that save thousands of gallons of water, even waterfree urinals — Honolulu designers are at the forefront of a ‘green’ building revolution
weeks. Asked about the smell, Kaneshiro replies, “We’ve had it in our office for four years, and I’ll tell you, it’s much better.”
Waterless urinals, it seems, are popping up all over. At Punahou School’s Case Middle School, president Jim Scott says, “Twelve-, 13-year-old boys always giggle about (our) waterless urinals, but it saves thousands of gallons of water a day. That’s a lesson learned that they can take for a lifetime.”
Scott says the school expects to one day rely on photo-voltaics “as the technology comes down in price, as we build buildings going forward.”
“It really leads to teaching for sustainability,” he adds.
Case Middle School architect John Hara, meanwhile, has been working for a year on his next project, the planned University of Hawaii West Oahu campus, which will be built green according to an industry standard known as LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
“The goal is to have a silver certification, and that’s (recently) mandated by state law as a minimum requirement,” he said. “Point of reference, Punahou’s middle school was gold.”
Features students might one day see on the West Oahu campus include photovoltaics mounted on rooftops, a wind generator (although that presents some difficulties), signs informing restroom users how its fixtures are conserving water, natural ventilation and natural lighting spilling into 75 percent of interior spaces offering a visual connection to the outdoors.
“Perhaps the greatest thing we did at Case Middle School was the fact that we made sustainability visible to young kids,” said Hara, owner of John Hara Associates Inc. “Sustainability is really next generation, it’s really not for us. ... But that’s an important aspect of doing an educational facility like UH West Oahu. These students will carry this with them for the rest of their lives.”
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