A newly-opened bike station in the heart of Washington, DC has been likened to an eye, a bike spoke and even a bike helmet. The glass-enclosed station sits adjacent to Union Station, where it makes low-impact commuter travel a reality. The station offers storage, a changing room and bike support services in a stylish and very low-energy building. The entire design was developed to make the best use of daylight and natural cooling, encourage green transportation, and demonstrate the possibilities for green building.
This is a beautiful piece of sculpture, but it is a terrible building and by no means “green.” Walk up to it and take a close look at the details. The once operable windows had to be caulked shut because they didn’t close fully. The large amount of glazing makes it a hothouse in a steamy humid environment in summer. The building has large electric resistance heaters to try to combat energy loss through its leaky envelope.
The building is not new either. Its been up at least a year and was well published when it first opened. Also, it cost over ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER SQUARE FOOT to construct! We could have done a lot of energy upgrades to schools for what we taxpayers spent on this ridiculous project. I like bikes and I like modern architecture and I even like this building visually, but it is NOT GREEN and NOT a good (to paraphrase Vitruvious: functional, sound and aesthetically pleasing) building.
bougie- thanks for the update. Clearly this was an ambitious project and shows the limits of engineering. If they had to caulk the glass the the whole cooling system will not work as designed. And yea, resistance heaters is clearly not a viable solution.