- The plastic frame on faculty office chairs is made of 100 percent recycled car battery plastic. One chair's seat and back is made of approximately 45 car batteries.
- The pre-patina colored copper on the exterior and interior walls also is made of recycled material and blends with the masonry.
- Highly polished concrete floors do not emit dangerous fumes.
- Desks and shelving units in faculty offices meet strict chemical and particle emissions guidelines, making a significant contribution to indoor air quality.
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Many of the building materials were manufactured within a 500-mile radius of the project.
- The design emphasizes over 50 percent natural light through the use of large outside windows and glass walls for many seminar rooms.
- A rainwater gathering system reclaims water for various uses throughout the building.
- An underground cistern collects rainwater for: toilets, selected custodial uses. and industrial uses in labs.
- An automatically controlled heating system drops or raises temperatures in unused rooms and turns off lights not in use.
- A heat recovery system lowers the amount of energy needed to heat the building.
- A white roof reflects more heat away from the building.
- To limit disruption and pollution of natural water flows, stormwater runoff is managed by decreasing its rate and quantity by implementing a roof/stormwater (cistern) harvesting system.
- Water collected in the cistern reduces runoff and helps conserve water usage.
- All of these features together produce a water use reduction of 60 percent over that of a regular building.
- Rainwater harvesting and reuse reduces municipality water used for sewage by more than 50 percent. An estimated 748,680 gallons per year is expected to be collected from the roof.
- This building is designed for LEED Certification to: teach energy conservation and sustainability, and practice conservation in the building's operations.
