World Birding Center Headquarters

Lessons Learned

The design was the result of an extensive long-term collaboration between the owner, planners, design team, and community. The establishment of the World Birding Center serves as a model for how other communities can partner to form a regional coalition for both resource protection and economic development.

Through a series of interpretive workshops and site visits with birding and ecological resource specialists, the team was able to learn important lessons about habitat protection and restoration. This collaboration and added knowledge was put to use by the designers in creating habitat-friendly facilities that feature wildlife attractors as a major element in the design.

Many critical lessons were learned from developing designs for these unique structures. The structural shell system is supported by buttressed concrete columns in one building and by a bolted steel pipe column system in the other two buildings. While the steel had a high recycled content and material weight advantage, we found that the flyash concrete system resisted the roof's thrust loads more efficiently with less construction complexity.

Custom aluminum exterior louvers were originally designed for exposed gable ends. We found that standard mechanical louvers can serve as effective light louvers, blocking out direct solar gain while allowing effective indirect lighting inside at a fraction of the cost.

previous topic: Ratings/Awards

next topic: Learn More

Our thanks to the ENERGY STAR program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and to the U.S. Department of Energy, and to BuildingGreen, Inc. for hosting the submission and judging forms.

For more information about the AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects, contact AIA/COTE. For help on how to use this Web site, contact .