Green Scene

BY PHIL HAGEN

Cesar Chavez Library: What Green Looks Like

A sweeping roofline serves to shade the library building and acts as a rainwater collector.

For the first time in years, the Tucson-based firm Line and Space, LLC submitted a project in hopes of landing it on the national AIA's Top Ten Green Projects list — but not because the Cesar Chavez Library was, by the venerable design/build firm's standards, exceptionally green. What the architects felt good about was how their nominee looked.

"As far as I was concerned," says principal Les Wallach, FAIA, "the Top Ten Green awards had started devolving. They were energy-conserving projects all right, but they were not very attractive architecturally. I thought Cesar Chavez was strong visually, and that it might be nice if they started promoting stronger architecture along with the ideas of green architecture."

While the City of Phoenix library did make the 2008 green list, the AIA's Committee on the Environment didn't exactly promote its winning aesthetic qualities. Maybe it should have. The irony of architecture's pop term for sustainable design is that, unlike the color green, you generally cannot see the concept of "green." But in this rare case you can — and in an attractive and meaningful way.

The green beauty of the $5 million Cesar Chavez Library — which has been oft celebrated since its debut in early 2007, including earning an AIA Western Mountain Region Design Award — has much to do with the 37,000-square-foot roof that sweeps over the 25,000-square-foot building like a giant wing. The effect is that the structure appears to have gently settled into rolling terrain along a lake in Laveen, an old farming community turned new suburb that's now part of Phoenix. "Like a bird that has landed in the park" is how Wallach describes it.

This is apt not only visually, but also sustainably, since part of Line and Space's mission as designer-builder was to disturb as little of the site as possible. A bird is part of nature's cycle; it gives as much as it takes. While the Cesar Chavez Library has, since early 2007, permanently perched on a substantial share of the park's turf, its net effect is significantly — perhaps even supernaturally — positive.

Strangely, for a project attempting to leave a delicate footprint, it had inherited a fairly big one. The lake was made by farmers in the mid-20th century, the earthen mounds came from the dig, and the expanse of lush lawn that developed once the 40 acres had become a park isn't exactly indigenous to the Sonoran Desert. But, Wallach says, "It seemed kind of absurd to throw away the embodied energy already there."

Besides, Cesar Chavez Park and its new anchor serve as an inviting gathering spot for a township that has boomed practically overnight into an urban environment. As AIA juror Susan Rodriguez put it, "This is an oasis — a living room for a densely developed area."

Here's where the library's giant roof goes beyond pleasant metaphor and shading device: A key green component of the project is that it collects rainwater that sustains the lake, which in turn helps irrigate the 40-acre oasis. "The problem with catching rainwater is that it's hard to have a big enough barrel," Wallach says. If you get 140,000 gallons on a roof in a year (as the library expects to), "you'd need the world's biggest collector." Instead, the lake does the job.

Line and Space took advantage of those mounds, too, cutting the building into them and using their thermal mass. Then, for the same purpose, the architects used the excavated dirt to create berms on the other side of the building. "It's free and actually saved money on the hauling," Wallach says. Not to mention energy consumption.

Wallach and company are also masters of little inexpensive touches that never make the green marquee yet add up to great examples of architectural resourcefulness. Those "touches" include piping condensation from the air conditioning units to the trees in the parking lot; exhausting recycled indoor air to the patio, resulting in a "microclimate" with slightly lower outdoor temperatures near the building; and allowing a transition zone for temperature and brightness for people entering and leaving.

None of these are new tricks, but that's not surprising. Line and Space has been in tune with green since 1978, when Wallach founded a firm "to design and build innovative and ecologically sound architecture." While he is glad the movement has caught up with him, he seems to use the word "green" begrudgingly. In a nearly hour-long conversation, he never mentions the possibility that the library may achieve LEED Silver status. He avoids the term "sustainability," pointing out his preference for "resource conservation." And don't get him started on the trend of architects putting "LEED AP" after their names.

"I don't like the hype," he says. "What people care about more than anything is they want to be perceived as green."

For Wallach, it's always been about the building — how it looks and how it performs. He doesn't understand why anyone would think of one without the other. "It's just a part of good design," he says. "Being green is part of the fundamentals. Especially in the desert."