2008
Project Partners
Description
The Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise showcases Ithaca College's commitment to environmental responsibility by seeking the highest level of certification in the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED™ rating system – Platinum – for a facility that supports the College's collaborative, team-based approach to business education.
The Park Center, the new home for the School of Business, is central to a campus plan that remedies the shortcomings of an inward-looking 1960s campus with new pedestrian quadrangles and walkways. The building's entrance faces a future companion building to frame a new campus entry court that offers a clear path to the College's main academic quadrangle and preserves the campus's hilltop views north to Lake Cayuga.
The Park Center is sited and massed to take advantage of daylight and prevailing winds for lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation. The building's glassy south facade sweeps back to control solar gain. The building has extra insulation and high-performance glazing to prevent heat loss and features premium efficiency motors and boilers. Stormwater collection supplies low-flow bathroom fixtures; there are also waterless urinals. Low-velocity displacement ventilation reduces fan power and cooling energy by using higher air temperatures supplied through raised flooring in classrooms and wall registers set low in offices. The building's locally-quarried rubble-stone base, garden terraces and green roof echo the local topography and native vegetation. Inside, Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood is used for finishes and fixed furniture, and a central four-story atrium and a dramatic open stair provide natural daylight and ventilation to classrooms, team study rooms, and a sophisticated trading room on the first two levels, and on the upper two levels faculty and administrative offices. The Park Center is the hub of educational "eco-tours."