Welcome To Our Living Building
“Imagine a building designed and constructed to function as elegantly and efficently as a flower.”
- Living Building Challenge
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THE HITCHCOCK CENTER’S LIVING BUILDING
To meet the challenge, the Hitchcock Center will:
- Restore contaminated soil of a former arsenic-contaminated apple orchard.
- Place an equal amount of land into permanent conservation restriction.
- Achieve Net Zero Energy through highly efficient building strategies and a 60 kW rooftop solar array
- Achieve Net Zero Water through composting toilets, rainwater collection storage, treatment for drinking water, and greywater filtration through a constructed wetland.
- Create landscapes that use native species to promote greater biodiversity.
- Use only chemical-free and non-toxic materials.
- Use locally sourced, salvaged, recycled, and sustainably harvested materials.
- Provide equal access to all of our community.
- Promote biophilia, the innate love for the natural world, through design artistry.
Founded in 1962, the Hitchcock Center for the Environment’s mission is to foster greater awareness and understanding of our environment and to develop environmentally literate citizens.
Our net zero energy, water, and waste building, built with responsibly sourced, nontoxic materials, is a powerful new teaching tool that supports a returned approach to achieving environmental literacy in the 21st century.
We are committed to providing accessible and affordable environmental education programs for people of all ages and abilities who seek greater environmental knowledge, understanding, and action in support of a more ecologically restorative and socially just future.
We invite you to join us in this commitment so that we may leave our children and our children’s children a safer, healthier, cleaner, and sustainable world.
USING NATURE’S WISDOM
These ecological principles underpin the design and operation of our Living Building.
ENERGY
RELYING ONLY ON RENEWABLE FORMS OF ENERGY
ENERGY DATA
RELYING ONLY ON RENEWABLE FORMS OF ENERGY
WATER
OPERATING WITHIN THE WATER BALANCE OF OUR PLACE AND OUR CLIMATE
Our Composting waste system
DRAMATICALLY REDUCING WATER USE AND
RETURNING NUTRIENTS TO OUR ECOSYSTEM
Materials
CREATING A MATERIALS ECONOMY THAT IS LOCAL,
NONTOXIC, AND ECOLOGICAL RESTORATIVE
RED LIST materials
CREATING A MATERIALS ECONOMY THAT IS LOCAL, NONTOXIC, AND ECOLOGICALLY RESTORATIVE
Beauty
RECOGNIZING BEAUTY AS A PRECURSOR TO CARING, PRESERVING AND CONSERVING
Health & Happiness
CREATING ENVIRONMENTS THAT OPTIMIZE
PHYSICAL AND PSYCOLOGICAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
Place
RESTORING A HEALTHY INTERRELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE
Equity
SUPPORTING A JUST AND EQUITABLE WORLD