Published by Chicago Tribune

'Green' revolution comes to inner city
City, state officials support endeavor

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published May 14, 2006

Say the words "green architecture" and certain high-profile projects come to mind. Think of the "green roof" at City Hall, 6 years old. There, far above the heads of the power brokers, a profusion of shrubs, vines, flowers and grasses creates a cooler, better-looking surface than heat-grabbing asphalt. The scene gives new meaning to the color green at a building where it long has been associated with unmarked bills stuffed into envelopes.

Now, a new crop of environmentally sensitive designs is showing that the benefits of green architecture can -- and should -- be spread to impoverished areas far outside the Loop.

This "inner-city green" represents the latest frontier in Mayor Richard M. Daley's effort to bring the benefits of green design to Chicago. Backed by financial support from the city and state, the trend deserves celebrating, not just socially but architecturally, because these projects reveal that true green architecture consists of much more than a green roof dropped on a building like a piece of lettuce atop a hamburger.

Sapping energy

This matters in a world where we fixate on the pollution caused by cars and trucks when, in reality, according to the Washington, D.C.-based American Institute of Architects, the biggest source of emissions and energy consumption is buildings -- the energy it takes to make building materials and transport them, as well as energy required to operate them. If we want to make a more sustainable world, buildings are the place to start, as two recently completed projects show.

The first is the Bethel Center, a retail, day-care and employment center in the Garfield Park area on the West Side. The second is Wentworth Commons, an apartment building in the Far South Side Roseland area for people who were homeless or at risk of being homeless. Both sit along streets where the curbs are strewn with garbage. Boarded-up storefronts and vacant lots loom nearby.

Into these grim surroundings, the buildings inject much-needed optimism, recalling the ideals of the early 20th Century modernists for whom architecture was an agent of social change, not just an aesthetic of steel-and-glass.

The most visible sign of their green architecture comes in the solar panels that are deftly integrated into their designs, a welcome contrast from the solar panels that were slapped onto roofs in the energy-conscious 1970s. At Bethel Center, the solar panels and their supporting brackets play the visual role of an old-fashioned roofline cornice, nicely capping the building and carrying the eye down the street. At Wentworth Commons, the panels and their supporting trusses are cleverly placed atop the roof to form a dramatic crown for the building's exuberant exterior.

Yet there is much more to the green architecture of these buildings than their roofscapes, particularly at the $4.5 million Bethel Center, which was co-developed by Matanky Realty Group and Bethel New Life, the Chicago non-profit that has ministered to the beleaguered West Side since the area was devastated by riots in the late 1960s. The chief designer was Kevin Pierce of Farr Associates architects, one of the city's leading green firms.

At Bethel, the green design begins with the building's location -- at Pulaski Road and Lake Street, next to the Pulaski station on the CTA's Green Line elevated tracks. Even if the Bethel Center had no green features visible to the eye, it would save energy because it encourages people to use transit. Parents on their way to work can drop their kids off at the day-care center, for example, and walk across a glass-enclosed sky bridge that leads to the CTA station. The broader lesson: A building doesn't have to look green to be green.

The two-story building itself represents a well-conceived modernization of traditional commercial architecture. Projecting aluminum fins, or light shelves, join with the roofline solar panels to shield the interior from harsh sunlight. Red- and brown-brick exterior walls peel back to reveal the building's insulating concrete and foam inner walls.

The combined effect of these details is a building that stylishly proclaims how it saves energy. The design at once revives the traditional city of block-filling buildings and delivers a forward-looking jolt.

There also is much to celebrate at the $13.2 million Wentworth Commons, which rises at 111th Street and Wentworth Avenue and was developed by Lakefront Supportive Housing, now Mercy Housing Lakefront. The development has 51 units, ranging from single-room apartments to multibedroom apartments for families. But it does not look anything like an old-fashioned housing project.

The chief designer, Susan King, of the Chicago office of Detroit-based Harley Ellis Devereaux, broke the facade into playful, earth-toned blocks of brick and glazed concrete that have the innocence of children's building blocks. The design, which suggests individual homes instead of a monolithic mass, stops just short of being cartoonish.

The crowning touch, literally, comes on the roof.

Instead of concealing the solar panels and their supporting steel trusses, King revealed them and arranged them to complement the building's architecture. Set along the perimeter, their raking diagonal profile endows the four-story building with a strong, rhythmic top and subtly suggests a traditional roof gable, as if to say: "Home Sweet, Energy-Saving, Home."

Surely it's no coincidence that the solar panels top the bright green sections of the facade along Wentworth Avenue. The only troubling sign are the water stains that mar some of the masonry blocks. But contractors are supposed to fix them.

Fortunately, the beauty at Wentworth Commons and the Bethel Center is much more than skin deep.

Sanctuaries

Each interior boasts a long list of green elements, such as wall paints that reduce the amount of environmental toxins typically emitted into the air. As a result, they are likely to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) sustainable design standards, which are green architecture's equivalent of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. But that is really only half the measure of their effectiveness.

Each building, in its own way, forms a kind of sanctuary from the city's hurly-burly, with green design elements accentuating the architecture's soothing presence. At the Bethel Center, an enormous skylight draws natural light into the stairwell of the building's two-level day-care center. Ringed by classrooms, the stairwell feels like a protected inner courtyard. As they take their afternoon naps, covered in blankets, children from the ages of 3 to 5 sleep in a setting that is remarkably quiet compared to the noise of the cars and trucks rumbling by outside.

Edward Ward, 13, enjoys the same quiet when he goes to sleep each night at Wentworth Commons. At his old house, he said, "gunshots would wake us up sometimes."

These are small buildings -- good ones, not great ones -- but they nonetheless point in a progressive direction, one where green architecture endeavors to address the health and well-being of the people it serves, their neighborhoods and the culture as a whole.

True, the green elements at Wentworth Commons added about $1 million to the budget and are estimated to save only about $20,000 to $25,000 a year in energy costs. A hardheaded for-profit developer would surely reject such added "first costs," but idealistic non-profit groups, especially those that get a financial boost from the city and state, are far more willing to give a green light to green architecture.

"If nobody does it, it's never going to happen," says Robert Banta, regional director of property operations for Mercy Housing Lakefront. "Every time somebody steps up and incorporates these kind of energy savings in a building, the next person that does it is able to do it a little cheaper than before. It's like any other new technology. The more it's used, the cheaper it gets."

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bkamin@tribune.com

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