UC Berkeley Housing Earns LEED Gold

by Katie Sloan

Berkeley, Calif. — The upper-class housing was completed in 2012 and built over a former parking lot.

Photo courtesy of Thornton Tomasetti.Berkeley, Calif. — Maximino Martinez Commons, a 416-bed housing community on campus at the University of California, Berkeley, has achieved LEED Gold. Engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti provided sustainability consulting services for the $53 million project, which is 147,000 square feet and is located on a former university parking lot. The commons offers sophomores and upper-division students options of five five-bedroom suites, 47 four-bedroom suites or 98 double occupancy units. The housing opened in 2012.

Thornton Tomasetti was retained by the university to manage the LEED certification process, which included providing sustainability strategy recommendations to the design team, tracking compliance with LEED during design and construction and reviewing and submitting documentation to the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). The project team comprised architects EHDD (executive) and Behnisch Architects (design); mechanical engineer Acco Engineered Systems; plumbing engineer IBE Consulting; and contractor Vance Brown, Inc.

A few of the key sustainability features include a roof-mounted solar hot water heating array, which offsets 8 percent of the structure’s energy use; landscaping that incorporates drought-tolerant, native and climate-adaptive plants; installation of high-performance plumbing fixtures to reduce potable water consumption by more than 30 percent.

 

 

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