One doesn’t often hear about sustainable design projects that are also historic preservation projects. But despite some preservationists who don’t believe that historic restoration can be accomplished sustainably, the restoration of a 19th century Italianate farmhouse demonstrates that historic restoration and green building principles do in fact complement one another. The house, once home to a former Georgia governor, was built around 1870 in the North Georgia mountains and is now owned by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The DNR challenged the design/build team to complete a historic restoration project that would incorporate principles of sustainability and retain as much of the existing farmhouse structure as possible; the result – a project that has earned LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Architecture firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent utilized a computational fluid dynamics (CFD), energy modeling and life cycle costing to incorporate sustainability principles into the project. And, in keeping with the history of early adoption of technologies such as indoor plumbing and electricity by earlier owners, the team selected an area near the farmhouse to install a 3.2 kilowatt grid-tied system that will generate power to offset much of the electricity used by the house.
Photo credit © Jonathan Hillyer/Atlanta. If you’d like to view and download additional photos, you can find them at http://bit.ly/ubIdAL.
For further details contact: Annie Kohut | Kohut Communications Consulting (tel) 770-913-9747 | (cell) 404-786-6062 (fax) 770-913-3197 | annielk@bellsouth.net www.kohutcommunications.com | Follow me at http://twitter.com/kohutcomm
Lord, Aeck & Sargent is an award-winning architectural firm serving clients in scientific, academic, historic preservation, arts and cultural, and multi-family housing and mixed-use markets. The firm’s core values are responsive design, technological expertise and exceptional service. In 2003, The Construction Specifications Institute awarded Lord, Aeck & Sargent its Environmental Sensitivity Award for showing exceptional devotion to the use of sustainable and environmentally friendly materials, and for striving to create functional, sensitive and healthy buildings for clients. In 2007, Lord, Aeck & Sargent was one of the first architecture firms to adopt The 2030 Challenge, an initiative whose ultimate goal is the design of carbon-neutral buildings, or buildings that use no fossil-fuel greenhouse gas-emitting energy to operate, by the year 2030. Lord, Aeck & Sargent has offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For more information, visit the firm at www.lordaecksargent.com





















