We’re Green
At Galapagos Art Space, we believe that part of serving the community means embracing environmental responsibility head-on.
Winner of a 2009 Building Brooklyn Award, and Municipal Art Society’s MASterwork Award nominee, Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO is on target to become New York City’s first LEED certified* ‘green’ cultural venue.
As cultural leaders, we can’t simply be placeholders, or bystanders in the midst of what others before us have built. We need to consider our place in society – and in this world – every time a cultural project puts a shovel into the ground, or goes out to buy paint or wood. This helps us to foster and sustain our artistic community beyond our careers and lifetimes.
We hope that our environmental efforts also demonstrate their real-world practicality: If li’l-ole Galapagos Art Space can do it, then so can any other performing arts facility, small business or building owner in New York City.
To be a green building we:
- Started with the fun stuff: a 1600 square foot lake inside our building that wicks heat away in summer and transfers the warmth of the ground beneath our building up in the winter.
- Retained our existing building structure: we didn’t break the building and build a new one
- Installed hyper-efficient mechanical heating, cooling, and ventilation systems, creating a very low energy consumption building
- Control our HVAC systems via occupancy sensors, so that when fewer people are in the space, the systems don’t work as hard, if they work at all.
- Use a highly-efficient, award-winning lighting design (under .75 watts/ft, not including stage lighting)
- Locally sourced and supplied our materials (concrete, steel, etc.), which were installed and created by local craftsmen
- Designed our ventilation systems to bring in substantially more outdoor air than required by code
- Use recycled content as much as possible, including 100% of the steel, 100% reclaimed and sustainable (forest council certified) wood for our bar and stage, and 30% of the poured content flooring, lake basin, mezzanine and walls
- Installed efficient and motion-sensitive fixtures in the bathrooms to maintain low water flow
- Heat our water with a energy-saving condensing hot water heater
- Used low or no voc (smelly and off-gassing) adhesives and paint / epoxy
- Run only Energy Star appliances
- Brightened our surroundings and enhanced oxygen flow with six flowering street trees!
Was it hard? No, it wasn’t hard. In fact – to be honest – it was very satisfying. You can do it too.
Contact us if you’d like to build something green. We’d be happy to share our experience.
