Amid the fraternity houses on Foster Avenue is a smaller building designed by the "Green Team," a group of Penn State students and professor Jack Matson.

Their goal was to construct a building that respected the neighborhood and the natural elements of the site and that harnessed the potential sustainability, Matson said.

The house at 331 E. Foster Ave. officially opened to the public Friday and was celebrated with an open house.

Matson & Associates, an environmental engineering consulting firm, will occupy the office, and Kevin Gombotz (senior-mechanical engineering) will live in the apartment downstairs.

"They always want someone from the business to live there so that the building has a lived-in feel and for security reasons," Gombotz said.

The house was built to be energy-efficient and preserve resources yet also to fit in aesthetically with the neighborhood. There is no air-conditioning, but the temperature is kept stable by the super-insulated walls and a ceiling for reduced heat loss. South-facing windows are used to increase natural light and supplement solar heating.

All materials used to build the house were from local suppliers that have the same environmental philosophy as the Green Team, Matson, professor of civil engineering, said.

The house costs about 20 percent more to build than a normal house, but the energy costs are only 70 percent of a normal house, Matson said. He calculated in five to 10 years, the owner would make back the extra money while also helping the environment.

"There has to be a first that will give people the incentive that it can be done," he said.

Roger Sommerfield, a 2001 graduate, was a fifth-year senior architecture major studying abroad in Italy when he was contacted to design the building. Sommerfield said he wanted to make sure that he kept elements of the historic Highlands District intact while designing the house.

The house has a turret, a tower-like structure similar to the one at Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity, 328 E. Foster Ave., across the street. It also has half-moon shaped windows and natural wood siding, which are on other houses in the neighborhood.

Matson said he did not have plans when he purchased the property at an auction in January 2000.

"This building was not my dream, but it became my dream, my obsession, to build something that was beautiful, that fit the cityscape and that was functional for my office," he said.

He then recruited the Green Team and William Butler, the builder. The entire process took two years. The idea is to make it a showcase, he said.

Sarah Gingrich (graduate-environmental engineering) is a member of the Green Team and believes people will inquire about the building and think twice when putting an addition on their house.

"This can be a model for other buildings, to incorporate new technologies in the market, and people know that they can be effectively used," she said.