From the indoors to the outdoors, the past to the future, a campus building currently under construction will showcase the connections we all need to have to our natural world and our future in it.

The new Stuckeman Family Building for the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, currently being built behind the Forum Building, on the west side of North Halls, is Penn State's first attempt at a green-designed building.

Paul Ruskin, Office of Physical Plant (OPP) spokesman, said Penn State and the builders, Whiting-Turner Engineering and Contracting, are planning to achieve the highest, or gold, certification from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.

The certification is based on a number of objectives buildings need to reach to be more sustainable and earth-friendly, Ruskin said.

Originally, the designers planned on a silver LEED rating, but now hope to achieve gold and will accept anything less as a disappointment, he said.

Tim Heltman, OPP project manager of the Stuckeman Building, said he has been with the project since the construction phase began and was the one to implement the design and get the building constructed.

Many different facets of the building are being designed to obtain commendation for various categories within the LEED system, he said.

Open space and optimizing the amount of daylight entering the building was a primary goal of the design.

A great deal of open space and large windows allow a high level of daylight into the building, saving on energy costs, Heltman said. With daytime lighting controls throughout the building, these windows cost about 10 percent more than normal, but it will cost less to operate the building each year.

The lighting in the building also dims as daylight grows through the day and then gets brighter as the sun sets, he said.

The roof system is designed to reduce the amount of heat that comes into the building, which elevates energy costs and use of air conditioning.

Heltman explained that indoor and outdoor air conditions are monitored electronically. Special windows near the top and bottom of the building can open automatically to regulate the temperature and humidity levels within the building. This natural ventilation through the building allows for much better airflow, he said.

An 18-inch-high elevated floor system will allow for more individual control over air conditioning as well as greater Internet and telephone access, Heltman added. Energy recovery systems are also planned that re-channel excess heat to other parts of the building, he said.

Ruskin said that more natural, local landscaping, attuned to the local climate, will be planted around the building so that extra water and attention will not be necessary for successful growth.

Seventy-five percent of the waste from the building's construction is collected and sorted into dumpsters and recycled. This is unique because at most construction sites, there is only one dumpster and everything is thrown away, Heltman explained.

Construction items such as dry wall, steel stud waste, wood products, concrete and brick debris, as well as traditional items like cardboard, aluminum cans and plastics, are recycled on site, he said.

At times, this effort can require extra work on the part of the construction firm, but that was part of the agreed-upon concept with Penn State, he said.

Ruskin added that nearly one whole face of the building would be plated with 93 percent recycled copper.

"The beauty of this copper is that 100 years from now, you can melt down the building and reuse it," he said.

Ruskin said that the new Stuckeman Building will house classrooms, faculty offices, computer labs, graduate areas, administrative offices for both departments and space for more than 500 students and faculty.

Scheduled to open in March of 2005, the building will include more than 500 individual studio spaces, which will be constructed throughout the building, including in the central mezzanine areas of the building, Heltman said.

According to Heltman, half of the materials being used to construct the building were obtained from within 500 miles of Penn State, and 20 percent of the materials were grown within 500 miles.

He explained that the construction team was very fortunate there were lots of stone quarries, steel mills and brick manufacturers so close to the university.

Ruskin said the way materials were purchased made the building unlike any normal construction projects.

"[Stuckeman] is kind of like a farmers' market -- at least 20 percent of it is going to be grown locally," he said.

Ruskin explained that not all of the building's benefits can be realized yet. When the building is demolished, the majority of the materials can then be recycled, he said.

"Half of the building comes from recycled products, but much of it can also be recycled itself," he said. "Everything wears out sooner or later, even buildings."

Even before construction began, care was taken in making the most of the pre-construction site, Ruskin said. As many trees as possible were saved, and parts of the site -- basketball hoops, fencing, streetlights and asphalt from the parking lots -- were all reused, recycled or donated to volunteer organizations.

In addition, since the site itself was once a parking lot, little existing green space was consumed by the building, Ruskin said.

From the beginning, there were a number of students involved in the design phase of the building, he said. Many insights and ideas from students and faculty were eventually implemented.

From now on, all new building projects will be designed with LEED standards as potential guidelines, Ruskin said.

In current buildings that are remodeled, it will be much more difficult to follow the standards, but care will be taken to improve as much as possible, he said.

Since the students and faculty that will use the building were involved in its inception, their curricula can be involved in the design. In some areas, construction and structural elements of the building will be exposed and can be used as a teaching aid.

Heltman explained the building's importance to future projects at Penn State.

"This is a special building -- there are a lot of things unique to Penn State, and now we have our first green building," he said. "We are now making an effort to do the same with future buildings."