Lakeside Living with a View
The task of renovating Waterbury Hall was one to adapt an outdated facility to the expectations of today’s college students and the technological future of higher learning facilities. The result is a bright, technology dense space that provides students with a home on campus where they can be productive and feel safe.
Waterbury Hall’s site is quite remarkable; directly on the Lake Ontario shoreline and surrounded by hearty windblown pines.
While the original building was an international style housing block that essentially ignored the natural beauty of the site, this massing and orientation away from the lake does provide the benefit of providing a wind break for those approaching the building from the campus side.
Leveraging the lakefront site
The design team was able to provide a panoramic visual connection to this picturesque site through extensive new energy efficient glazing in the main floor lounge.
The lakefront site is also leveraged with corridor-end operable dampers that are automatically opened when conditions allow, along with another at the top of the elevator tower, controlled by the building management system.
In warm weather a stack effect is created by the height of a shaft within the elevator tower and the cool lake breeze is drawn through the building corridors, providing effective cooling and ventilation with near zero energy usage.
This innovative strategy, along with many others such as extensive rain gardens and bio swales, carefully studied solar protection, and naturally derived, low life-cycle cost materials, are providing the necessary credits for the pursuit of a minimum LEED Silver certification.
