Kimball Office Achieves LEED-CI Certification for New York Showroom
JASPER, Ind. - June 16, 2008 - "Creating eco-friendly facilities is embedded in our design criteria, as it is for many of our customers," said Douglas Prickett, Director of Sustainable Design, Kimball Office. "Using the LEED-CI guidelines helped us improve the environmental performance of our New York space and gave us an effective model for demonstrating environmentally sustainable ideas and solutions to commonly experienced renovation problems."
Partnering with Kimball Office on the design of the 12,000 sq. ft. space in New York's historic Union Square neighborhood was TVS Interiors of Chicago, Atlanta, Dubai and Shanghai.
To meet LEED-CI's rigorous standards, they implemented several strategies. These included recycling more than 75 percent of the project's waste materials and sharing the project as part of an educational program to give clients insight to "green building" design and environmentally friendly products.
Other sustainable strategies involved:
- Preservation of natural resources through the use of local, recycled and rapidly renewable materials;
- Optimization of occupants' well-being through the use of natural light and monitoring of thermal comfort;
- Minimization or elimination of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in materials specified for paints, adhesives, carpets and composite wood materials; and
- Reducing water consumption by incorporating low-flow water conservation fixtures.
Kimball Office is a member of the USGBC and operates several LEED-certified facilities, including its silver-certified Chicago showroom and gold-certified Jasper showroom, also designed by TVS Interiors.
LEED-CI is the recognized standard for certifying high-performance "green" interiors that are healthy, productive places to work, are less costly to operate and maintain and reduce environmental footprint, according to the USGBC. In the office furniture industry this is particularly important because it provides measurable guidelines for addressing clients' requests for sustainable products and office-place solutions. LEED-CI offers four levels of certification: baseline certified, followed by silver, gold and platinum certification, each level being predicated on specific design and environmental criteria.
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