McMurtry College earns LEED Gold certification

BY JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News staff

The colors of McMurtry College are silver and purple, but the five-story, 324-bed building that opened its doors last fall is officially Gold — as certified by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). It is the second newly constructed building at Rice and one of only a handful in Houston to earn Gold, the second-highest rating, from the USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

	McMurtry College was built concurrently with Duncan College, which earned its LEED Gold certification earlier this year.

McMurtry College was built concurrently with Duncan College, which earned its LEED Gold certification earlier this year. Construction of the two residential colleges were a critical part of Rice’s Vision for the Second Century goal of expanding the undergraduate population by 30 percent, a goal which is nearly complete.

LEED certification is an internationally recognized standard for the design, construction and operation of eco-friendly buildings. It is awarded to projects designed and built to universally accepted criteria for energy efficiency, material conservation, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

To be LEED-certified, new buildings must comply with a number of green building standards, and they are awarded points for those they achieve. Buildings are certified in one of four categories, based on the number of points they earn — certified, silver, gold and platinum.

Among the key features that earned McMurtry its Gold certification are:

— Smart controls that shut off room air-conditioners when the windows and doors are opened.

— Motion detectors that turn off lights in unoccupied rooms.

— Natural daylight in all rooms, with energy-efficient windows to let in light but not the heat.

— Thick exterior walls with two layers of brick to provide high thermal mass and reduce energy consumption.

— A green roof with low-maintenance plants that reduce energy needs for heating and cooling, slow the rate and volume of storm water runoff, provide habitat and mitigate temperature increases caused by the urban heat island effect.

— Dual flush toilets, which allow users to select the water volume for each flush.

— Front-loading high-efficiency washing machines that reduce water, energy and detergent use.

— Low-emission interior paints and finishes for improved indoor air quality.

— Innovative use of fly ash and slag waste products in the concrete to provide attractive textures and finishes with significantly lower amounts of greenhouse gases produced during manufacturing.

— Pre-fabricated bathrooms that reduced the generation of on-site construction waste.

— Extensive recycling, from the provision of recycling bins to the diversion of almost 90 percent of all construction waste from the landfill.

— Covered bike racks, with space for 60 bicycles.

The college, which was dedicated last week, was made possible by a multimillion gift from Rice alumni Deedee and Burt McMurtry, both from the Class of 1956.

In 2006, Rice announced its commitment to constructing all its new buildings to LEED standards, a commitment that was later raised to LEED-Silver in 2008. Rice Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson said the commitment came about in part through a class project led by then-undergraduates Sabina Bharwani ’07, Stephanie Squibb ’07 and Niki vonHedemann ’08. “Their intention was for the new residential colleges — which were then just in the planning stages — to be green buildings,” he said. “They were of course wildly successful. I think it’s quite fitting that a college made possible by the McMurtrys, who were instrumental in founding the college system at Rice, would be so shaped by another generation of civic-minded Rice students.”