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(Music)

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Steve Zornetzer: NASA Ames has just completed the first new building

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on its campus in twenty-five years.

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It's a very exciting building.

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It's extremely energy efficient, it's extremely sustainable in its design

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and its functionality.

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The building, called Sustainability Base,

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was named after and in honor of the Apollo 11 astronauts

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that landed on the lunar surface at Tranquility Base

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over forty years ago.

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Sustainability Base is designed to bring NASA technology

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and NASA ingenuity to create a living testbed

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for the evaluation of new energy efficient technologies and approaches

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that can benefit the people of planet Earth

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as we move forward into the twenty-first century.

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(Music)

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William McDonough: "Cradle to Cradle" is a design strategy

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that looks at materials as nutrition.

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And looks at energy as something that comes from renewable sources.

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And looks at water as something that is meant to be clean and drinkable.

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So this building is looking at its material as either biological nutrition,

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things that should go back to soil, air or water safely, with a productive agenda.

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Or looks at things as technical nutrients, things that could go back to technology,

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the steels, the plastics, the polymers and so on.

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This is a really critical subtext for Sustainability Base.

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This building and this complex will have that fundamental characteristic.

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Kevin Burke: Our solution for Sustainability Base, for this building and landscape

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is really a combination of high technology and ancient wisdom.

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We were able to set the building on an east-west axis to take advantage

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and capture the breezes that are coming down the bay from the north on a daily basis

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and moving across the building site.

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So we could minimize the depth of the building to about fifty-five feet

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and create a building that really operates as much as possible on natural ventilation.

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One of the early inspirations that we had were these giant wind tunnels.

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They have this exoskeleton.

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They take the structure and they move it to the outside and expose it

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so that they create a column-free space.

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There's no inhibition to the movement of air.

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This framework supports the seismic lateral loads in the building,

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but it also provides the armature for the shading elements that

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minimize the heat gain that we have in the building.

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Daniel Bufton: Sustainability Base was very cleverly designed.

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In lieu of a cooling tower, we've used a series of geothermal wells.

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That allows us to use a temperature gradient of natural water,

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pump it through the building and to either adapt for heating or cooling needs

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as required by the building.

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It's a very state of the art technology and we're actually making it work.

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In addition to that, there are photovoltaics that sustain

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a great deal of the electrical power demand of the building.

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If indeed the electrical load, for whatever reason, becomes greater,

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we are supplemented by a device called a Bloom Box from Bloom Energy,

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which converts natural gas, as a fuel, directly to energy.

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There are times when the building will actually either be energy neutral

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or will generate more electrical power than it actually requires

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and we will contribute power to the power grid.

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What we hope to do is have a series of sensors throughout the building

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on all energy systems: lighting, heating, cooling, peripheral equipment

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such as printers, computers and so forth.

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And at any given moment in time, anyone at a workstation will be able to call up

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how much energy is being consumed.

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And that will give people the information on which to make decisions

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that will allow them to be much more energy efficient stewards

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of their workspace and their professional environment.

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Michael Flynn: Sustainability Base will have a unique water treatment system

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that takes hand wash water, shower water, water from all of the sinks in the facility

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and will purify that water to potable standards and then utilize it to flush the toilets.

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The technology that we're using is derived from a NASA spaceflight

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water recycling technology.

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For instance all of the water on the International Space Station is recycled water.

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And the system that's going into Sustainability Base

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is just a larger version of that type of a spaceflight application.

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And then for irrigating and watering external we are using tertiary treated water

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from local sewage treatment plant, so the overall goal

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is to reduce the total water consumption of the building

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by upwards of eighty or ninety percent.

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Krisstina Wilmoth: One of our major goals in this building was not just to end up

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with a great design.

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It was to end up with a very livable, very pleasant, very useful workspace

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for the researchers and employees of Ames Research Center.

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And we made our selection for all materials going into the building

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to be both healthy and as green as possible for the planet,

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not just for the individuals but for the planet.

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So, all of our products are GREENGUARD certified or "Cradle to Cradle" certified

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and they have very few toxins in them, those that do have low emissions

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and the recycled material is in our furniture, it's in our carpets,

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it's through all of the products in the building.

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We also have the unique opportunity to reuse our products from Ames.

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We demolished one of our wind tunnels and we took some of that product

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and we put it into our building.

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And as a result we have oak flooring in our building that is warm and welcoming

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and a really nice reminder of Ames' history.

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Scott Poll: One of the things we are most excited about

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is that Sustainability Base will be a living test bed for innovative research.

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One example is the use of an anomaly detection software tool

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called Inductive Monitoring System, or IMS.

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In the International Space Station, IMS is used to monitor several key systems.

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In Sustainability Base, IMS will use data from building sensors

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located throughout the building to automatically learn

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how the building typically behaves and then identify anomalies,

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or changes in building performance that might otherwise go unnoticed.

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Other NASA-developed software solutions such as Hybrid Diagnostic Engine,

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or HyDE, will be used to monitor the performance of the geothermal system.

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Prognostic models will also be deployed to anticipate faults

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and predict when maintenance is needed for the greywater recycling system.

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NASA will also collaborate with other government agencies, industry

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and academia to try out innovative technologies for sustainability

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and try them out in Sustainability Base.

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Steve Zornetzer: Sustainability Base is at the leading edge

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of what buildings of the future can and will be.

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It's an intelligent building. It's a highly efficient building.

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It's a building that informs itself,

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and its occupants about their carbon footprint,

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about their energy consumption

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and about how they can perform their jobs in a more efficient and effective manner.

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Sustainability Base is a living testbed for the future.

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It is an icon for what can be in the built environment.

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And it brings NASA ingenuity and NASA creativity

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back to the people of Planet Earth.

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(Music)