U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 8 Headquarters, Denver, CO

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) works to protect human health and the environment, and helps to develop and enforce environmental laws. As part of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Design Excellence Program, Syska Hennessy Group was selected by the Opus Northwest/ZGF Architects design-build team to provide engineering services for the EPA’s new, environmentally sensitive regional headquarters building in one of Denver’s most important historical and civic districts.

The building is situated on an urban brownfield site that formerly housed a U.S. Postal Service annex. Denver’s street grid system is 45 degrees off the cardinal compass directions, making solar control of the building envelope crucial to the project’s energy performance targets.

At the project’s inception, iterative energy and daylight simulation studies were carried out to explore alternative integrated design strategies that might be implemented to optimize the building’s energy performance and daylighting. Through this iterative and integrative modeling process, Syska helped the architectural team evaluate building envelope performance criteria and design, as well as understand the energy impacts of various mechanical air distribution strategies, such as conventional overhead versus underfloor air distribution, and achieve a 47-percent energy use reduction and over a 30-percent water use reduction compared to the baseline building.

Some of the sustainable features integrated into the design include:

• Underfloor air distribution.
• Air-side economizers for free cooling.
• District steam to hot-water converters for heating.
• Energy-recovered steam condensate for domestic hot water.
• Low-flow plumbing fixtures and water-free urinals.
• Stormwater collection and reuse system.
• Lighting efficiency fixtures and daylighting controls.
• Rooftop photovoltaic system.
• Green roof.

As a federal building, this new headquarters had to meet U.S. Department of Homeland Security requirements. Successful high-performance design integration resulted in a LEED Gold certification.