Case Study:
Winrock International Global Headquarters

Nonprofit's Mission Accomplished

By Nadav Malin

Overlooking the Arkansas River in suburban Little Rock, Winrock International’s new headquarters is “an abstraction of the traditional Arkansas dogtrot,” according to design architect Kenneth Drucker, of HOK. Its signature feature, a gull-wing roof, not only keeps the sun at bay, it collects rainwater—an integrated solution that resulted from a collaborative and tightly managed design and construction process.

Winrock International is a nonprofit organization that supports sustainable development. In a staff of around 700 all over the world, about 70 employees are based at Winrock’s headquarters in Arkansas, which was, until recently, on Petit Jean Mountain in rural Morrilton. That campus was expensive to maintain and required a lot of staff travel, so the board decided to find an alternative use for that facility and move its headquarters to Little Rock.

Given the organization’s mission, making its new building green was a given. Winrock’s president, Frank Tugwell, was familiar with green building, having worked previously on a project with green architect William McDonough. Winrock’s board established two key goals for the project: that it would achieve a LEED Silver rating and that it would do that without costing any more than a comparable conventional building in Little Rock. The board set the budgetary constraint not only because of the organization’s tight funds, but because they were determined to set an example for the local real estate market. “We wanted to be able to tell people who come in and are impressed, that it is something they can afford,” says Tugwell.

Before hiring an architect, Winrock contracted with Horne Rose, one of several companies affiliated with green developer Jonathan Rose, to serve as the owner’s representative. Horne Rose staff facilitated the process of selecting the design and construction team, then managed design and construction. Sarah Haga, of Horne Rose, contends that conditions established at the inception of a project, such as how decisions will be made and what the schedule will be, can affect the outcome dramatically: “Our experience is that the best, most sustainable projects have a very thoughtful schedule that allows time to integrate green components,” says Haga.

By showing examples of their previous work, principal-in-charge Bill Odell and his team from HOK convinced the board that they could produce a high-performance green building on a conventional budget. As soon as the architect and contractor had been selected, all the consultants participated with the client in a design charrette to develop the concept design.

The 2.2-acre site was tightly constrained by setbacks and other factors, leaving limited options for siting the building. There was only one way to orient the building in the available space, and it had the long axis running north-south. “We were not very happy when we saw the site,” admits Odell.

After working through a series of shading studies, the team’s solution to the less-than-optimal orientation was an oversize roof, which shades the building through most of its occupied hours. Some large trees were preserved nearby, helping to shade the building when the sun is low in the sky. The narrow plan that was dictated by the site’s constraints helps with daylighting, nearly all of the regularly occupied spaces are fully lit during the day, so the lights don’t need to be on.

Having the construction manager on board during design worked well. “We were able to run budgets on a number of design options through the course of design,” says Stan Hobbs, AIA, of Nabholz Construction. “The whole experience was great for us,” he adds, noting that it isn’t always so smooth. Designers sometimes think “we’re going to be telling them how to design the building,” he says; on the contrary, Hobbs’s goal is to help them figure out how to get their own design built.

Throughout the design process, solutions were proposed and then adjusted to meet budgetary constraints, which involved frequent negotiations between the contractor, the owner’s rep, and the architects. “At first the entire building was glass,” recalls Tugwell. When that turned out to be too expensive, some of the glazing was replaced by opaque siding. Nabholz was also helpful in figuring out simpler ways to achieve the desired ends, which, Haga notes, saved energy during construction: “Constructability is looked at as a cost-saving measure, but it’s also a sustainability measure.”

Little Rock had little if any recycling infrastructure, so reaching the 50 percent recycling goal needed for achieving a LEED point seemed unlikely.

The project’s mechanical engineers were willing to explore unconventional approaches for providing comfort in a modern office building, but only up to a point. The entire office space has raised floors with under-floor air distribution, including a separate diffuser for each workstation so each occupant has control over temperature and airflow. But natural ventilation was not adopted, nor was the idea of taking advantage of the adjacent marina to use a water-source heat pump instead of a conventional cooling tower.

Although Nabholz Construction had not worked on a green building before, it took on the task with gusto. The firm sent several people, including the on-site supervisor for the Winrock project, to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild conference in Austin, Tex in 2002. Odell ran into two of them and was amazed at their enthusiasm. “They were working that expo. Not just picking up literature, but o the subcontractors.

Prior to Winrock’s construction, Little Rock had little if any recycling infrastructure, so reaching the 50 percent recycling goal needed for achieving a LEED point seemed unlikely. But Nabholz staff catalyzed the creation of a local recycling infrastructure and achieved a recycling rate of 75 percent, which is worth two points in LEED, at no added cost. “That’s something that we now do on all of our projects, whether they are pursuing LEED or not,” reports Hobbs.

Winrock’s new headquarters has generated a lot of excitement in the community. Together with two other LEED buildings, the Clinton Presidential Library and the headquarters for Heifer Project International, this project has put Little Rock on the map as a green building tour destination. Tugwell and others frequently find themselves giving impromptu tours to visitors.

An extended process of shakedown and adjustments has followed initial occupancy, so the Winrock staff has yet to begin documenting energy performance. Among the significant changes was replacing the cooling tower with a heat-exchange coil in the marina. Fortunately, selling the cooling tower offset part of the cost of this modification. Additionally, lighting controls that were set up incorrectly are being rewired.

In the end, the most important test of a facility is whether the occupants like it. In this case, says Tugwell, there is no doubt that they do. “I think that they stay at work longer,” he says. “They hang around because it is a pleasant place.”