Harris A. Smith building at Clemson University receives LEED Gold certification

Published: March 11, 2010

The Harris A. Smith Building image by: Clemson University

CLEMSON — The Harris A. Smith building at Clemson University has received LEED Gold certification from the United States Green Building Council.

The three-story, 28,000-square-foot building is home to the Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics, a one-of-a-kind multidisciplinary program shared by Clemson’s College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences and the College of Business and Behavioral Science. The Smith building is the first LEED Gold-certified building on the main Clemson campus.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is the nation's premier program for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. Only about 4,500 buildings nationwide are LEED-certified. Of these, 1,500 have achieved gold certification, the second-highest level behind platinum. South Carolina has eight LEED Gold buildings, two of them at Clemson University, including the Smith building and the parking structure at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research in Greenville.

The $7 million Smith building, which opened in October 2008, was designed by the architecture firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent of Atlanta in collaboration with Michael Keeshen & Associates of Greenville.

“LEED certification of the Harris A. Smith building is an important validation of the commitment to sustainability at the Sonoco Institute and at Clemson University,” said Chip Tonkin, director of the institute.

The Smith building uses 44 percent less energy and 33 percent less water than a standard building. While many of the energy-conservation features use advanced technology, such as Solarban windows, it does not use expensive solar panels, which kept down construction costs. Solarban windows filter out most ultraviolet light while allowing in light in the visible spectrum, reducing heat transfer.

Other energy-saving features include sensors that automatically adjust lighting inside and turn off lights when a room is unoccupied and roof overhangs/sunshades that help to block out a majority of summer daylight while allowing in light from the lower-angled winter sun. Even the tree to the south provides shade in the summer and lets in the winter sun in when its leaves have fallen. More than 40 percent of the construction materials were extracted, harvested or recovered and manufactured within 500 miles of Clemson, and 30 percent are recycled.

The Sonoco Institute uses a strategy similar to the way the building was designed in its packaging research.

“We are not looking for a single silver bullet to achieve sustainability,” Tonkin said. “While advanced materials and high-tech solutions are a key part of the future for both the built environment and the packaging industry, creating a sustainable product is just as importantly about common sense and doing a lot of little things right.”

“Sustainability is best achieved with a holistic approach that takes into account all facets of the package-product life, including manufacturing, supply-chain logistics, environment, customer-usage and disposal,” said Stephen Tyner, a recent packaging science graduate. “Focusing on just one of these is simply not going to provide the optimum result.“

Tyner interned at the Clorox Co. and helped design a sustainable package that saved the company millions.

The Harris A. Smith building is named for major donor Smith of Atlanta, former chairman, president and chief executive officer of Smith Container Corp. After selling the company, he decided to invest in higher education to support the packaging industry his family helped define.

Smith made gifts and pledges of $3.7 million for the building and institute, and Sonoco Products Co. of Hartsville, S.C., contributed $2.5 million.

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About LEED
The LEED green building-certification program is a voluntary, consensus-based national rating system for buildings designed, constructed and operated for improved environmental and human health performance. LEED addresses all building types and emphasizes state-of-the-art strategies in five areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials and resources selection, and indoor environmental quality. The U.S. Green Building Council sponsors LEED certification.

About Lord, Aeck & Sargent
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, Mich.; Atlanta; and Chapel Hill, N.C. For more information, visit www.lordaecksargent.com.