San Diego State’s Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union was chosen as a winner in the 2014 Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Best Practice Awards.
The new building won an Overall Sustainable Design award. The University of California, Davis was also a winner in the category.
The awards were announced in early April and will be presented June 16-20 at the 2014 California Higher Education Sustainability Conference. This year, SDSU’s Associated Students was selected to host the gathering in the student union.
Nominations were open for one month this past February and a scoring rubric was used to narrow down the nominees. SDSU’s newly constructed LEED-certified student union was a nominee, partly because of its construction process that used a variety of recycled materials.
The majority of the scrap from the demolition of the old Aztec Center was recycled and some other construction materials included fly ash that would normally end up in a landfill, student union Facilities Manager Randy McWilliams said.
The selection process began with the committee of student representatives from California State University and University of California schools, investor-owned utilities sponsors and three to four experts for each topic, UC Sustainability Specialist Rashmi Sahai said.
This was the 13th annual Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Best Practices Awards competition. SDSU most recently won an award in 2012 for its wireless DART HVAC controls in the HVAC Design/Retrofit category and a 2013 award for its lighting efficiency campaign in the Student Energy Efficiency category.
The Overall Sustainable Design Selection committee chose the new building for its overall efficiency.
Sahai said the contest was open to both CSU and UC schools. A panel selected two winners for each of the categories, one from each school system.
Categories were predetermined by the panel and a committee was assigned to each grouping. This year’s categories included Overall Sustainable Design, HVAC Design/Retrofit, Lighting Design/Retrofit, Monitoring-Based Commissioning, and Student Energy Efficiency Program.
“(The awards) started off focusing on energy efficiency and expanded to include many different sustainability topics,” Sahai said. “It recognizes leaders in sustainability in public areas.”
According to A.S. Facilities and Sustainability Director Glen Brandenburg, additional award-qualifying features included manual and automatic operable windows with shades to provide increased ventilation effectiveness, a control white cool roof with extra insulation and a green roof portion reduces the heat island effect.
With the areas of the building that require artificial lighting, extensive lighting control systems with motion sensors and daylight harvesting, Brandenburg said. The numerous exterior walkways replaced heated and air conditioned interior hallways
“The design team looked at the historical precedents of how California mission architecture responded to the warm, dry climate of Southern California to help organize the building and develop an exterior enclosure that did the most to reduce heat gain while maximizing opportunities for natural daylight to reach the interior of the facility,” Brandenburg said.
On-site solar panel arrays on the roof of the student union and Parking Structure 1 were one of the ways the building utilized renewable energy, McWilliams said.
Other schools awarded for their sustainability efforts in 2014 included CSU Stanislaus, CSU Dominguez Hills, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego and CSU Long Beach.
California investor-owned utilities funded the program.
Photo courtesy of Glen Brandenburg
