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Johnson Controls’ High Performance
Green Buildings Initiative is a collaborative effort designed
to make full use
of energy management
technologies, with a focus on
sustainable development. The company’s Brengel Technology
Center, one of the first
buildings in the United States to achieve LEED Green Building certification,
exemplifies the ideals of the initiative and provides an ideal
example of urban redevelopment. Located in downtown Milwaukee,
the Brengel Center provides office space for about 400 of Johnson
Control’s employees and serves as a working showcase for
its technologies.
The $16.9 million, 130,000-square-foot facility, earned LEED certification
by using
innovative, cost-effective environmental design and construction
techniques in the areas of
site selection, energy efficiency, water conservation, occupant
comfort and health, materials usage and indoor environmental quality.
Specific environmental features include:
- Light-colored concrete and roofing materials as well as
landscaped surfaces to decrease heat islands.
- An open courtyard provides green space in the middle of a downtown
area.
- A Metasys Building Automation System to optimize efficiency
and performance
of the building’s mechanical and electrical systems and provide fully
integrated
energy monitoring.
- Decreased dependence on
automobile use via nearby bus lines and providing cyclists
with showers.
- Water efficient fixtures reduce use by 20 percent.
- Building materials (more than half) that contained more than
20 percent recycled content.
- The use of Personal Environments, a technology that allows
individual adjustment of temperature, lighting, background noise
and air flow.
- A permanent indoor air quality monitoring system.
- Utilization of daylighting strategies to provide 10 percent
of the building’s potential energy use.
- A rooftop mounted weather station to help forecast the building’s energy
system load.
- Rainwater recover system in cooling towers.
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