GREENBUILD TOURS

Explore sustainable development throughout the Navy Yard. The tour will begin in the Ensemble/Mosaic Marketing Center, covering the Navy Yard’s transformation and the path towards LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED ND). The walking portion of the tour will bring participants through a mix of LEED-certified buildings, eco-conscious infrastructure, and innovative public spaces. In addition to tours of four LEED-certified buildings, participants will learn about the mixed-income residential development at Chapel Block from a bird’s eye view.

Also including green stormwater infrastructure and public activations featured in the Navy Yard’s signature parks, including the James Corner Field Operations-designed Central Green Park , League Island Park, and the Riverfront Greenway.

The tour will conclude at Building 543, a redevelopment of a former Navy coppersmith shop that now serves as Urban Outfitters’ corporate campus and home to Shop 543 Café.

A compelling and informative tour of Schuylkill Yards featuring Philadelphia’s next-generation life science building, 3151 Market. Centered around a 1.3-acre public park, Schuylkill Yards is a master planned, urban, walkable, transit-oriented development that includes the adaptive reuse and redevelopment of existing buildings. The construction of new ones into high-performance offices, laboratories, retail, and residential buildings. Every detail in Schuylkill Yards is carefully considered to help the community connect, live their best lives, and even change others' lives through discovery and innovation.

3151 Market is meticulously designed with sustainability at its core, providing state of the art office/lab space, premier amenities, and a prime location at the epicenter of the region’s flourishing life science ecosystem. Targeted for LEED v4 Platinum and WELL Silver, the 12-story building features a dynamic glazing system, multi-modal transportation access, a heavy focus on occupant well-being via plentiful access to daylight and outdoors at all levels of the building, and optimized engineering systems. Don’t miss the chance to experience this impactful development and project for the City of Philadelphia and surrounding region!

At the Saint-Gobain North America Headquarters Campus, based 35 minutes outside of Philadelphia in Malvern, PA, attendees will experience first-hand Saint-Gobain’s Purpose —Making the World a Better Home — through a tour of a high-performance office campus, including both a LEED Double Platinum building and a Living Building Challenge Core building, fostering productivity, collaboration, and well-being. Saint-Gobain is the world's largest building materials company and a leader in transparent and sustainable products, systems, and solutions with close to 2,000 EPD’s, HPD’s and LCA’s-- of which approximately 70 are included in the two buildings and will be experienced on the tour.

The tour will include a discussion with Re:Vision Architecture on the recently completed renovation of the CertainTeed Innovation Center, a Living Building Challenge Core Ready building.

Join the FCA design team for a thought-provoking tour of their new headquarters. Attendees will explore the relationship between aesthetically differentiated “neighborhoods” which allow for integration of the Quadruple bottom line (People, Planet, Prosperity and Place), and the use of biophilic and neuro-sensitive design strategies to create a deep feeling of well-being. The tour will outline the ambitious steps taken to maximize sustainability: Reduction of the floor plate and energy profile by 60%; divert 85% of waste from landfills, reduce the lighting density by 40% versus the original office space. The tour will include an honest discussion about the impacts of moving from the south and west side of the building to the north side, as well as other challenges that arose as the project was placed into use. Finally, FCA’s innovative and Sustainability Action Plan will be highlighted.

Visit two key projects that highlight the opportunities when reevaluating your building. Two of University of Pennsylvania took this opportunity to keep the historic elements of their buildings “to renovate and adapt to the modern world. The Richards Medical Lab”, a Lou Kahn building design, will focus on the 4-year renovation, archival research, and adaptation to use prismatic light-filled spaces, framed by the precisely articulated and masterly restored exposed concrete, brick, and glass structure. The West Philadelphia Title and Trust Company Building, built in 1925, overcame the existing building’s severe spatial and structural limitations to create functional and dynamic interior spaces, as well as engaging exterior facades – one of Penn’s most successful recent projects.

Tour attendees will learn how the team’s analysis of the existing structure – carried out in part using laser scanning techniques – led to programmatic modifications that saved most of the existing building, reducing the project’s embodied carbon, shortening construction time, and eliminating much of the planned demolition and disruption. The team’s unflagging focus on sustainability revealed opportunities to exceed the university’s standards for indoor comfort, environmental quality, and emissions reduction.

As gene therapy innovators, Spark Therapeutics enjoys a healthy synergy with the vibrant academic research environment in Philadelphia. When the startup outgrew its initial locations, they committed to staying within the city and built research & manufacturing facilities in West Philadelphia near the research environments of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. This tour will take you to two facilities - the renovated Bulletin Building, Spark's first LEED building, and to the construction site for the Gene Therapy Innovation Center, a one-of-a-kind research and manufacturing facility in the heart of West Philadelphia. Representatives from the owner team, design teams, and construction teams will explain some of the key sustainability strategies undertaken at these facilities.

The University of Pennsylvania Amy Gutmann Hall is the first mass timber mid-rise in Philadelphia. The building supports the School of Engineering, Applied Sciences Data Science research and other academic programs. It is a vibrant and welcoming hub for cross-disciplinary collaborations focused on harnessing the power of data. Aspirations established during the integrated design process focused on creating an environment that connects occupants, who work in a digital world, back to the natural environment. The building is pursuing LEED Gold and the design contributes to a warm, tactile, and welcoming biophilic environment while reducing the building’s carbon footprint by 52% relative to concrete and 41% relative to steel. The tour will include insights on the extensive cost analysis process, solutions developed to address union concerns, and a deep dive on carbon analysis performed to drive design decisions.

1722 Pine Street is a four-story, all electric, Passive House retrofit to a four-unit apartment building c.1845, in Philadelphia's Historic Rittenhouse-Fitler District. The Owner/Design-Build team employed the EnerPHit standard to achieve the hallmarks of Passive House certification: fossil fuel-free energy use, reduced energy bills, superior IAQ, super-insulated/air-sealed exterior envelope, best in class sound privacy, and reduced health risks related to moisture, mold, dust, pests, and drafts. Four luxury apartments uniting history and high performance will be discussed: The fourth-floor bi-level with private roof deck, third-floor transitional unit with original decorative molding, second-floor unit with traditional hearth and millwork, and the modern ground floor Office and Owner’s unit. Presented by the Architect/Owners, the tour will focus on Passive House performance, Philadelphia Historical Commission approval, project design and history, the art collection, the Owner’s bi-level residence and BluPath Design’s office, where healthy high-performance building is their exclusive focus.

These projects highlight the opportunities with government and community support effectively reengaged and the local communities.

The Overbrook Environmental Education Center is a brownfield to greenfield success story. Originally a construction storage yard for large vehicles. Community partners, neighbors, the US EPA, PA Department of Environmental Protection; the OEEC assessed, cleaned, and repurposed the facility into an urban green space with a bioretention system. Pervious asphalt and pavers, flow-through planter, swale, and green roof design supporting an underground stormwater retention system. Now it is a key hub for the community bringing a more residential diversity.

Rebuilding of the Cobbs Creek Recreation was possible because of the Philadelphia Beverage Tax, Rebuild is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into neighborhood parks, rec. centers, and libraries. The projects highlight sustainable building practices: an existing recreation center with a light-filled new addition that is targeting LEED Gold, a nature-themed playground that uses wood play equipment, and a strategic renovation of a community environmental center housed in a former stable.