At the Perot Museum, lessons in science and sustainability

Dallas Morning News – by David Flick
Saturday March 24, 2012

Lara Solt/Staff Photographer
The Perot Museum of Nature and Science’s concrete panels insulate the 10-story building and incorporate slag, a waste product of steel production.

A year before the Perot Museum of Nature and Science is scheduled to open, the museum’s leadership is debating kitchen utensils.

Utensils made from biodegradable potato starch, on one hand, would be preferable to traditional silverware, which uses up water and energy to rewash. SpudWare, though, has its own drawbacks.

“We don’t really have the capacity to deal with biodegradable material onsite, which means you have to haul it away, which creates more trash,” said Jennifer Houston Scripps, the museum’s director of strategic initiatives.

“We’ll probably start with the traditional silverware. But it’s a subject for more discussion.”

The debate underscores the high priority museum officials have given to environmental concerns in designing and constructing the new building.

Most of the ideas are far more environmentally significant than the composition of the cafe dinnerware.

The extensive landscaping will include only native plants, for example. Everything on the site will be made of materials obtained within a few hundred miles of Dallas.

The outside of the building is clad in concrete panels that incorporate recycled materials. The 150,000 square-foot structure will be so water-efficient that officials expect a monthly utility bill less than that of some private homes.

By such efforts, museum officials hope to attain a coveted gold LEED rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. The rating, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is awarded for such things as water efficiency, energy use and choice of building site.

There are about 50 such accredited buildings in Dallas and its suburbs. Most are smaller commercial structures or public buildings. The list, however, contains such noted buildings as the Frito-Lay headquarters and the J.C. Penney home offices in Plano, and the Chase Tower in downtown Dallas.

There are no other Dallas museums on the list, and few anywhere else in the country, said Alan Scott, who has helped oversee LEED accreditations for a decade.

“I can’t think of many anywhere that have sought accreditation,” said Scott, a Portland, Ore., architect. “I think the people at those museums may have been focusing on their content and may not have thought of their mission in terms of education about environmental issues.”

Teaching by example

For Nicole Small, CEO of the Perot Museum, education is the mission.

“It’s important for us to be thoughtful about the environmental aspects of the museum,” Small said. “We are a museum of nature and science. We have to practice what we preach.”

Within reason, she added.

The LEED ratings also include a platinum level, but Perot officials said its rigid standards would have proved impractical or even self-defeating.

“You’d have to install radiant heating in the floors,” Small said. “But the pipes would be crushed if you brought in a fork lift, and I don’t know how a museum could ever install new exhibitions.”

Thom Powell, the director of sustainable design for the museum project, said lighting posed similar questions. Nothing illuminates as cheaply as natural light, but direct sun can damage some exhibits, such as dinosaur bones.

“We’re a museum with visitors and sensitive artifacts, and we need more control over temperature and humidity than would be possible at the platinum level,” said Powell, an architect with the Dallas firm of Good Fulton and Farrell.

The Perot Museum is the first building of any kind in North Texas to seek accreditation from three separate nonprofit agencies, Powell said.

Besides the LEED rating, which is primarily focused on the initial design of a building, museum officials are applying for credentials from the Green Building Initiative, (separate from the Green Building Council) which focus on day-to-day operations, and the Sustainable Sites Initiative, which emphasizes landscape design.

What’s outside counts

Indeed, some of the most innovative features of the Perot Museum are outside the building.

It is clad in concrete panels that are meant to evoke a striated limestone stream bed. The concrete, which also serves to insulate the 10-story building, incorporates slag, a waste product of steel production.

The landscaping at the raised base of the museum is divided into six zones that reflect the ecologies of the Lone Star State, such as the East Texas Piney Woods, the Blackland Prairie and the West Texas Desert.

When it rains, the water will be drawn into conduits underneath the plantings and channeled into two 25,000-gallon cisterns — in one case, after being diverted over a 10-foot waterfall along Field Street.

During the hot and dry summer months, the cisterns will be replenished with moisture recaptured from the air conditioning condensers. In a rainless August, air conditioning condensation could produce 46,000 gallons of water, according to museum estimates.

The cistern water would be used for nondrinking purposes, such as irrigation and toilet water. What water will be taken from city utilities is expected to result in a monthly bill of less than $500.

In any case, visitors won’t be drinking bottled water — at least none sold on the site.

“The bottle is made of plastic, plus there’s the energy required to deliver it and then to haul it away again,” Scripps said. “For hard-core conservationists, its one of the worst things you can do.”

Behind the scenes

There are innovations visitors cannot see. The buildings operations, including energy use, can be monitored in real time — and modified — from a hand-held tablet.

The wood in the museum’s furniture comes from sustainable forests. The paint contains no volatile materials that would release harmful fumes into the air.

The $185 million facility has been funded by private donations, many from local contributors who made their money in the oil and gas industry — a frequent target of environmentalists.

But Small said there has been no resistance to the museum’s ecological goals.

“The people in the gas and oil industry have been among the most environmentally conscious,” she said. “They’ve been incredibly supportive of what we’re trying to do.”

Scripps said the worst obstacles faced by museum officials were put there by nature.

“A federal building was designed in San Francisco that was the first one in decades not to have air conditioning,” she said. “That’s a wonderful thing, but my thought was — it’s in San Francisco!

“You can’t do that here and get away with it.”