San Francisco Office Build-out
The first commercial retrofit in the United States to earn a Platinum rating under version 4 of the LEED for Commercial Interiors green building rating system.
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Project Details
First Office in U.S. to Earn LEED-CI v4 Platinum
California has more LEED-certified square footage than any other state in the country. So how do you make an average San Francisco commercial retrofit stand out from the crowd? You make it aesthetically stunning, functionally adaptable and very green. So green, in fact, that it earns the first Platinum rating in the United States under version 4 of the LEED for Commercial Interiors green building rating system.
We provided LEED coordination and documentation services to Gensler for the 15,000-square-foot office space at 650 California Street.
Thornton Tomasetti’s Platinum LEED certification demonstrates tremendous green building leadership. The urgency of USGBC’s mission has challenged the industry to move faster and reach further than ever before, and this project serves as a prime example of just how much we can accomplish.
Highlights
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Version 4 is the most stringent green building rating system offered by the U.S. Green Building Council and the new benchmark for green design and construction.
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The project is one of only 25 LEED CI projects worldwide that are participating in the v4 beta program.
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To meet the beta program’s goal, the build out incorporated multiple sustainability strategies.
Energy Strategies
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Window film was installed on the south and west sides to improve the performance of the existing windows by reducing the solar gains.
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LED lighting fixtures were installed with daylighting controls that reduced lighting energy use by 55 percent from the baseline requirements.
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Plug load management was calculated to take advantage of plug load savings that are typically not realized in LEED projects.
Advanced Metering
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In addition to temperature and flow meters, calculations were required in order to arrive at the portion of central plant energy that is attributable to the tenant space demand.
Enhanced Commissioning
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Although we provide BECx services, that option is not included in the Commercial Interiors form of the v4 rating system, so we followed the monitoring-based option.
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Our approach utilized both BMS signals collected through the HVAC direct digital controls (DDC) as well as tenant-managed electrical metering and monthly data analysis.
Daylighting
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We used both computer simulations from our building analytics team and actual daylight meter readings taken in the completed spaces to determine the floor plate was slightly too deep for demonstrating compliance. The space as the desired daylighting for most of the year. Interior materials and furnishing
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We worked with Gensler and BCCI to identify building materials and products that could meet the transparency requirements of having an Environmental Product Declaration.
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Additional LEED points were earned for material ingredient reporting and leadership practices in sourcing of raw materials.