“Most people when they hear we’re building a green building at a garden, they think we’re building a greenhouse,” NTBG President Chipper Wichman.

Green (environmentally friendly) buildings are beginning to emerge everywhere and it may soon become the standard people will see when they vacation on Kauai. Right now on the island of Kauai the National Tropical Botanical Garden is a green building under construction. The building will ask for the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. The certification will put them in league with other buildings that are already green in Hawaii. These buildings are; Case Middle School at Punahou School, the John A. Burns School of Medicine in Kaka’ako, the Gateway Energy Center at Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii and Maui’s Dowling Co. headquarters.

The Botanical Research Center wil be the first major Leed-certified building on Kauai. The construction of the building is also being used as a way to train and give experience to the subcontractors working under Unlimited Construction Services the contractor for the project. “We do government buildings,” said Unlimited president Peter Robson. “I thought that it would be a good avenue to learn everything possible about this system, being economically and environmentally sensitive. We’re finding we can do both.”

The architect who is designing the building is Dean Saka-moto from Honolulu. He said that after looking at the most environmentally friendly construction and design process, Leeds name came up almost immediately. “It’s a holistic way of looking at construction and minimizing your impact on the environment,” said Saka-moto.

The building will be a two-story design with poured concrete walls, incredibly large concrete two-story pillars with tree-like limbs at the top and a concrete room. All of the inside will be open-aired with the exception of valuable books. These books will be held in a climate-controlled room as many of the books are antiques.

Wide overhangs will be used to shade the wall to keep cool in and heat out or visa-versa, and a energy-efficient air-cooling plant will be used for cooling. Paints and glues are vetted so that there are no toxic fumes and the roof will have a 29.9-kilowat solar photovoltaic array.

Even the parking lot will be green as it will be covered in porous grid made of recycled plastic that will allow rainfall to percolate into the soil rather than run off. The roof will also capture rainwater which will be stored in an underground tank and then used for plant irrigation downhill from the building.

Much of the materials for the building are recycled. Only steel with recycled metal is used, lumber is brought from recycled torn down buildings, excess concrete is broken up and reused for roadbeds. Plastics and scrap metal then leftover from the project are then recycled as well.

In all over 750 cubic yards of waste has been taken from the site with 700 going to recyclers and only 50 going into landfills.

“This project touches on every aspect of construction, but (green building) is just being more conscious of everything throughout the process,” said project manager Todd Lang.