FORT COLLINS - The Rocky Mountain Innosphere, 320 E. Vine St. in Fort Collins, has earned LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute. The Innosphere was recognized for its low energy and water use, natural lighting, solar generation, regionally sourced materials and diverting construction waste from the landfill.
The 32,260-square-foot building opened in January and houses about two dozen startup companies in the fields of clean energy, bioscience, information technology, innovation and research. The nonprofit Innosphere was formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Innovation Initiative or RMI2.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certification provides an objective and internationally recognized standard for what constitutes a "green" or high-performance building. A very small percentage of buildings across the country actually achieve the Platinum designation, the highest level awarded.
The Innosphere's sustainable building milestones included 35 percent less indoor water use than a typical office building; 80 percent construction waste diversion; 32 percent recycled content of materials; 21 percent regional material procurement, and the generation of 27 percent of total energy cost of the building through on-site solar cells, according to the USGBC. Other notable features include abundant natural day-lighting, low-emitting and nontoxic materials, paints and finishes, and the implementation of a measurement and verification plan to track energy and systems that can quickly identify any efficiency issues.
"The success of the Innosphere is a result of a focused community effort that involved excellent collaboration from project conception through integrated design and construction," according to Brian Dunbar, executive director of the Institute for the Built Environment at Colorado State University, part of the Innosphere project team. Other members included Preview Architecture, Sherman Design LLC, Beaudin Ganze Consulting Engineers, Verde Project Development, Dohn Construction and Wirsol Solar.
For more information on the Innosphere, go to www.rmi2.org.
The 32,260-square-foot building opened in January and houses about two dozen startup companies in the fields of clean energy, bioscience, information technology, innovation and research. The nonprofit Innosphere was formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Innovation Initiative or RMI2.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certification provides an objective and internationally recognized standard for what constitutes a "green" or high-performance building. A very small percentage of buildings across the country actually achieve the Platinum designation, the highest level awarded.
The Innosphere's sustainable building milestones included 35 percent less indoor water use than a typical office building; 80 percent construction waste diversion; 32 percent recycled content of materials; 21 percent regional material procurement, and the generation of 27 percent of total energy cost of the building through on-site solar cells, according to the USGBC. Other notable features include abundant natural day-lighting, low-emitting and nontoxic materials, paints and finishes, and the implementation of a measurement and verification plan to track energy and systems that can quickly identify any efficiency issues.
"The success of the Innosphere is a result of a focused community effort that involved excellent collaboration from project conception through integrated design and construction," according to Brian Dunbar, executive director of the Institute for the Built Environment at Colorado State University, part of the Innosphere project team. Other members included Preview Architecture, Sherman Design LLC, Beaudin Ganze Consulting Engineers, Verde Project Development, Dohn Construction and Wirsol Solar.
For more information on the Innosphere, go to www.rmi2.org.
Article published by NCBR.
