Restoring historic buildings to achieve healthy environment.

Built before the use of modern mechanical systems in 1917, Syracuse University's Slocum Hall is a historic academic building which utilized environmentally-driven climate control strategies evolved over 2000 years of Western building practice. Like many historic buildings, with the introduction of new technology throughout the 20th century, many of these strategies were abandoned.

Garrison Architects, commissioned by the University to repair this historic hail, has decided to create a hybrid building by restoring many of these traditional strategies in order to maximize the building's sustainable elements. As a result, state-of-the-art mechanical and life safety engineering have been utilized to gain maximum performance from the original passive environmental systems, while demonstrating a new understanding for sustainable options.

Slocum Hall had been roughly treated over the course of the 20th century. Its grand staircase and atrium were removed, ceiling lowered and a variety of haphazard mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems installed. Garrison collaborated with the University's Department of Design and Construction, the Engineering School and Peterson Engineering, placing sensors inside and outside the building to measure its thermal performance throughout the winter and summer months. Initial findings indicated the hall was an effective insulator, despite not having modern insulating materials. Its walls, made of stone, brick, hollow terra cotta and plaster, maintained a steady interior temperature of 64 degrees throughout Syracuse's worst weeks of zero degree weather. Furthermore, heat from occupancy and the heating system naturally rose to collect at the underside of the floor slabs, heating the floors above to add to the winter comfort.

As the season moved into the summer months the sensors indicated the building did a wonderful job of mitigating solar heat, maintaining an interior temperature on its southern side at no more than 86 degrees, despite outdoor temperatures being in the high 90s.

Further exploration uncovered additional devices in the original design intended to control its environment effectively without machinery. A system of ventilation shafts were uncovered, that were created to work in conjunction with a central atrium and operable transoms to induce air 'flow, and combined with the thermal dampening of this building's heavy mass made its system's extremely effective.

These findings made it clear that Slocum Hall is a structure that represents the collective knowledge of thousands of years of building history. Completed just as the modern era was coming to fruition, it was the last of its kind, built without reliance upon energy-intensive climate control systems.

Now, in an era reconsidering health and environmental consequences of extensive energy use and poor indoor air quality, we are aware of the effects of these systems. However, we still remain unwilling to live with the relative discomfort of Slocum Hall's era, leading to a decision by the University to make this a hybridized building.

Plans now have opened the building's atrium, allowing air to pass through to its sky lit attic, where it would be expelled by the natural buoyancy. Working with the University's School of Architecture, a program was developed for the building allowing it to function with only half of its spaces fully air conditioned. The remaining spaces now rely on the building's passive environmental systems with limited cooling assistance.

The redesign saved more than two million dollars in capital costs through decreased air conditioning loads and over a hundred thousand dollars in operating costs a year.

Slocum Hall represents a new way of managing building environmental systems. With intelligent use patterns and mixed mode systems, integrating passive and active systems, architects can now substantially improve the energy performance and air quality of historic buildings.

The completion of the Slocum Hall will demonstrate sustainability in a holistic and comprehensive manner.

JAMES GARRISON, AIA FOUNDER, PRINCIPAL, GARRISON ARCHITECTS