Title: City of Columbia Water & Wastewater Distribution Facility
Location of Proejct: Columbia, SC
Project Completion Date: 2017
Firm Name: Watson Tate Savory

Short Description: This LEED Gold project, Columbia SC’s first sustainable public facility, re-purposes an abandoned automobile dealership to house municipal Water division staff, fleet and equipment. Through a rigorous programming effort, project requirements were streamlined, providing a clear strategy for efficiently utilizing existing site and structures while providing a new administration building for full-time staff and community engagement. While the administration building subtly recalls the glass and steel auto dealerships that once lined the boulevard, re-purposed pre-engineered structures are re-clad as articulated, energy efficient warehouses. Improvements to the former brownfield site include naturally filtering 95% of stormwater and reducing water usage 73%.

Architect's Statement: COMMUNITY

When the City purchased an abandoned automobile dealership to provide much-needed space for their Water Division, the architects saw an opportunity to do more-- enhance the community by providing a model for sustainable contemporary, well-organized design. As such, this project provided an opportunity to revitalize a deteriorated commercial corridor while setting sustainable standards for future City-owned projects.

For decades Water Division staff had occupied a re-purposed windowless “big box” chain store, in confusing,haphazard offices and random spaces. Initially, the architects met with the client group and observed workflow in the existing space. Through this process, a streamlined simplified program emerged, allowing all functions to be efficiently, transparently organized on the new site. The architects further urged the City to make this their first sustainable facility, setting the goal of LEED Gold.

The resulting architecture, now a beacon of optimism locally, was featured at the recent national Civic I/O Mayor’s Summit at South By Southwest in Austin, TX. At the summit, Mayor Steve Benjamin made the following remarks:

“This building is forward-thinking architecture and a tangible way to shape a more resilient community. All mayors must be introduced to the power of architecture in creating the public realm. In 50 years, we may not be here, but what we build will remain, and it has the power to demonstrate what is important to us—what matters to us—and whether our communities are prosperous.”

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING

Echoing its original function, the showroom location is re-purposed as the only facility accessible to the public, with a design that subtly recalls the mid-twentieth century automobile dealerships that previously lined the boulevard. In this new iteration, a sustainably-designed glass prism with a vegetated roof exaggerates the extroverted spirit of the original structure.

To efficiently provide daylight throughout the building, exterior curtainwalls deploy multiple layers of strategies that, in turn, drive the minimal architectural language of the building exterior. Though initially designed with vertical sunshades, solar studies revealed that east and west facades, tilted slightly off the north-south axis, required horizontal sunshades for maximum shading. On the south façade, a single horizontal sunshade blocks summer sun and functions as a light shelf throughout the year. Exterior sunshades, low-e fritted insulating glass units and translucent hand-operated interior blinds combine to provide optimal protection from solar gain and glare

Offices wrap the exterior, with a prefabricated glazed partition. At the north-facing lobby, a south-facing linear light monitor penetrates the vegetated roof to pull direct sunlight into the space. Lighting on sensors throughout the building is designed to respond efficiently to changes in light levels, for daylight harvesting. An exterior composite wood rain screen lines the inside face of each of the three entries, providing a warm contrast to the otherwise restrained glass and steel exterior, introducing at the exterior a primary feature of the interior palette. As a foil to the building’s taut exterior, flowering plants on the vegetated roof peek over the edge of the low parapet, gently waving in the breeze.

WAREHOUSES

The three warehouses at the rear of the site remain essentially warehouses for equipment, vehicles and fleet maintenance, with shared workstations for crews who work primarily in the field. Re-skinned, the buildings are clad predominately in vertically seamed aluminum siding, subtly acknowledging the vertical mullion pattern on the Administration building. Recessed louvers at the eaves create a break between walls and the characteristically low-sloped roofs, expressing the roofs as folded planes in response to the dramatically sloping site. Sustainable features, described further below, dramatically improve energy and water use performance of the warehouses.

Improvements in envelope performance include Energy Star roofs and high-performance exterior walls. Because most of the warehouse functions do not require full-time occupancy, radiant heat for minimal conditioning of storage areas, occupancy sensors, acrylic skylights and industrial fans provide an adequate indoor environment while contributing to energy efficiency.

THE SITE

Prior to construction, this Brownfield site, which slopes north to the adjacent neighborhood, was 100% impervious, covered entirely in asphalt, creating erosion and flooding. While the primary reason the City purchased the site was for much-needed parking and outdoor storage, the design team was intent to dramatically reduce negative environmental impact.

The design includes milling and reusing existing asphalt for pervious paving, reducing site imperviousness by 30%. Six rain gardens, a green roof on the Administration building and three water quality units, treat 95% of stormwater over the 10-acre site before discharging to the storm drainage system, removing 80% of total suspended solids, oils, grease, fecal coliform and nutrients from the runoff. Eighty-three percent of construction waste was recycled, and water use was further reduced by 40% through a combination of xeriscaping and efficient fixtures. A variety of native trees have also been placed throughout the site to provide a nearly continuous canopy of shade as they mature.