BRIT (Botanic Research Institute of Texas) tour

Our class took a tour of the Botanic Research Institute of Texas, or BRIT headquarters, located on the north side of the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens.  The Building is the first in Tarrant County to earn a LEED certification PLATINUM rating.  I spoke all about LEED in a separate post, so will simply focus on the buildings features that helped it attain the rating:

BRIT headquarters front 

The "living roof" can be seen on top of the building!  Planted with native plant life that are capable to withstand the local weather, including recent droughts

The facility serves as an educational facility

Here is a map of the entire site, which was designed to run rain water to a single point, a pond.  The bottom right is the "prairie."  The northern building has the living roof, the southern building has a solar array which provides much of the facilities electric needs.

Reclaimed wood lines the wall to the left, while the ceiling is made of bamboo, which quickly replenishes itself because it grows to rapidly.

The outer walls of the building have been planted with native creeping vegetation which will eventually grow to completely cover the outer walls.  Vines crawl up cables that have been placed onto the structure to help them.  Since the plants are native to the area, they withstood the drought of the past couple years, and are now flourishing in the wed spring we've had this year.

Another shot of the outer wall plants

Here is a natural meeting area.  The seats are stumps which have been re-purposed for the task.  This is one of may outdoor meeting areas.

Here is the natural prairie on the north side of the facility.

Since the headquarters is actually two buildings, the designers were awarded extra LEED points for combining them in a way that mimics the outdoors.

An outdoor meeting space on the second floor.  Sustainable wood makes for an inviting meeting area.

We couldn't get to the roof of the southern building to look at the solar array.  But this mock-up of the panels that were used were on display.  These unique solar panels were designed by Solindra, which went bankrupt.  The technology utilizes a tube wrapped in photo-voltaic material and lifted above a white or other reflective roofing material.  The sun rays then strike the roof and bounce back to the underside of the tube, so more energy can be produced.