ENR Southwest Project of the Year: Pulling All Stops to Meet Client Sustainability Goals
From the get-go, the members of the team that created Tempe’s $192-million Rob & Melani Walton Center for Planetary Health at Arizona State University had their eyes wide open. They were aware of the challenges of a site located at the busiest intersection in Arizona. They knew that being sidled up against an active light rail system would limit the work window—especially for cladding—on that side of the building. They expected to go to depths to bore a utility tunnel under both the tracks and an existing irrigation canal. And from the very beginning of the project, the team was aware of ASU’s ambitious operational and embodied carbon reduction goals for the 281,000-sq-ft research building, intended as a showcase for sustainability and climate programs.
But it never occurred to anyone at the outset of the job, completed last December on budget and ahead of schedule, that to meet ASU’s sustainability goals for construction materials, the team would end up paving a path for reducing embodied carbon in concrete structures—a path other building teams might consider following.