Case Studies Green Building

To a lot of folks in southeast Springfield, Missouri, it’s more than just another library. Known as the Schweitzer Brentwood Branch Library, it’s located in a residential neighborhood rather than on a busy urban street. For decades it has been where countless children have discovered and sustained the joy of reading, and where their parents […]

As happens, St. Louis Community College recently decided to replace its extensive system of 50-year-old heating and domestic hot water distribution systems connecting all of the campus’ buildings—with additional areas for electrical service issues included in the scope. The Missouri institution decided on a local engineering firm that handles both mechanical and electrical work. Those […]

The prospect of designing a building comes with infinite possibilities, and while this is what makes Paul Felder’s job fun, he believes it can also be a trap. “As an architect, you must know when to stop designing,” he says. “I’m not looking to push people out of their comfort zone or attempting to see […]

How does a family-owned company in a small Heartland city get to be a global heavyweight in the competitive industry of rubber and vinyl commercial flooring while maintaining quaint in-house values that might seem more likely with a mom-and-pop operation? It’s a question that Dee Dee Brickner, marketing manager for Roppe Corp., never tires of […]

Seafront condominiums don’t often win plaudits for creativity. Functionality, for sure; after all, they tend to be big-box, even bland buildings packing in as many units as possible, each with pricy views of the ocean. Then again, few of those buildings were designed by the late Charles Moore. For it was Moore who designed a […]

The 1970s brought a storm of energy crises down upon the United States and the world in the form of oil shortages, fluctuating energy costs and blackouts, which spurred research into sustainable building and energy independence. Fifty years later, green building has gone from a fringe interest to the fastest growing sector of construction. The […]

Today’s university students are said to expect more variety and depth of experience from dorm-room life, quite a contrast to students of the past, who might have been happy with a single-sized mattress and couch. This has motivated schools like Saint Michael’s College to provide a selection of suite and apartment-style residence halls, offering students […]

Founded by Ted and Mary Clear as Fin Pan Inc. in 1975, T. Clear Corporation, based in Hamilton, Ohio, has built its estimable reputation on a foundation of providing high quality, energy efficient and durable products to all facets of the residential and commercial building markets. But there is much more to the T. Clear […]

When Bialosky Cleveland designed its new office, the 67-year-old multidisciplinary design firm had an opportunity to practice what it preaches, “building more with less.” Housed on one floor of a former automobile manufacturing facility in midtown Cleveland, the loft-like design studios embrace a minimalist, industrial aesthetic that is true to the building’s original character. By […]

History buffs have long been drawn to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, site of the 1863 Civil War battle that so turned the tide in the Union’s favor and inspired Abraham Lincoln’s famous address. At, of course, a high price. The casualty count could have filled a modern baseball stadium. About 50,000 men, fairly evenly divided between those […]