Johnson and Wales University's new $42 million Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence was awarded LEED Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council this month. The award is the second-highest environmental acknowledgment a building can receive.
The certification is based on a 100-point scale whose credits are "weighted to reflect their environmental impacts," according to the council's website. The scale, which also has 10 possible bonus points for innovation, measures sustainability, water efficiency, "energy and atmosphere," resource use and environmental quality. To attain gold certification, a building must receive at least 60 points. Platinum, which requires 80 points, is the only higher certification.
Of Rhode Island's eight gold-certified buildings, four — including Brown's Rhode Island Hall — are located in Providence. No building in the state has received the platinum certification.
The Cuisinart Center is the first academic building JWU has "built from the ground up," said Miriam Weinstein, manager of communications and media relations at the university. The building reflects JWU's commitment to "green initiatives," she said.
The university has also been renovating other buildings to make them more environmentally friendly in past years.
"It's a building everyone's proud of," she said, adding that it fosters "a sense of ownership and community participation."
The building, located on JWU's Harborside Campus, has four stories. It contains 30 teaching labs and classrooms, nine hot kitchens, as well as bake shops, pastry and chocolate labs, microbrewery labs and meat cutting and fabrication labs. The roof allows rainwater to be stored and reused for irrigation. Large windows allow light to stream into the building, creating an "energy booster for everybody," Weinstein said.
