Whatever happened to…? This ubiquitous question is posed to many who have been labeled as
pioneers in the modern sustainability movement. Every one of those green leaders knows he or
she is not the first, that there is a rich heritage of teachings from ancestors around the globe.
Writing about events, even green building projects in the last 50 years, sometimes seems only to
be marking “today.” The recounting of the EPICenter’s rise in 1994 and subsequent demise in
2000 is no different but is being retold if only to answer that common inquiry and commemorate
a team that Amory Lovins once described as “the rocket scientists of sustainable design.”
The journey of that team began in 1992 when Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Montana
secured an earmark of $1.2 million which was administered by Dr. James Hill at the US
Department of Commerce’s National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), then
serving as sponsor of four other sustainability projects. Montana State University’s Office of
Research and Technology Transfer was charged with identifying appropriate projects and
funding the green building technology research. By 1994, it was clear the developing
technologies would need to be demonstrated and tested in a physical structure.
About the same time, the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (AIACOTE) had partnered with the US EPA and corporate America to publish their joint researched
entitled “Environmental Resource Guide.” Demonstration projects, such as the Greening of the
White House and the Pentagon, abounded. MSU Vice President of Research Robert Swenson
instinctively knew that Montana had a place in this leadership. His vision was one he professed
frequently and posted on his office door, that there were “insurmountable opportunities.”
Dr. Swenson’s idea was to integrate two teams (one local, one national) to design and build a
10,000 square foot scientific experiment that would operate as “the most energy efficient
building in the world.” He brought together Bob Berkebile, principal of BNIM Architects in
Kansas City, and Don McLaughlin, principal of Place Architecture in Bozeman, who had
recently completed the first state-owned building in Montana to be called a “green building.” As
they considered the project site at the Headwaters of the Missouri River, they adopted a
guidebook, “The Journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark,” aptly chosen for a modernday “Corps of Discovery.” Readings from the 5,000-page journals became an inspiration at
nearly every project meeting and all design charettes that attracted local residents such as
sculptor Debbie Butterfield and actress Jane Fonda.1
Bob Berkebile wrote about the impact of changes Lewis and Clark would have noted if they
retraced their steps, starting in his hometown down river from Montana. “I assumed things would
be more to Meriwether’s liking under the ‘big sky’ of Montana and in the Gallatin Valley where
‘a river runs through it,’ but it became painfully obvious that human development had changed
the landscape even in Montana. The rich tapestry of flora and fauna that Lewis and Clark had
described were now hard to find. Nor did we see foliage too dense to walk through or beaver
dams too numerous to count. They have been replaced by the monoculture of agribusiness with
its attendant fences and irrigation canals.” 2
This observation motivated the team to expand the project goal of energy efficiency to include
resource efficiency and strategies for restoring biodiversity. Additional grant money followed
and “…only gradually did we realize that many of our most important breakthroughs with new
systems, technologies and materials were resulting from intuition and collaboration. The design
concept that evolved and the potential it represented exceeded expectations and triggered
remarkable responses from participants, sponsors, and stakeholders,” Berkebile recalled in the
project’s final report. 3
The design concept was in fact given a name, “Plus Ultra,” by Berkebile. The BNIM team
leaders, Chris Kelsey, Kathy Achepohl, and Phaedra Svec, knew what the Latin term meant,
“more, beyond” and pushed every concept in that direction. Once Jason McLennan joined
BNIM, the push became a shove. It was not only a mantra, it was a methodology—identify the
state of the art, find the barriers, and move beyond that barrier.
The need for innovative engineering found international engineer Ron Perkins and later Peter
Rumsey, collaborating daily with the local team of CTA Engineers, headed by Shawn Murray.
Their challenge was to design building systems that would take the building off the grid as well
as be able to treat its own waste, specifically water and air pollution. Building on the early work
of Dr. John Todd’s Living Machine and Dr. Teruo Higa’s Effective Microorganisms (EM) in
Japan, the team embraced the local talents and innovations of MSU faculty and students who
chose plants and built a full-scale, working prototype in a university greenhouse. The final
“polishing” point would be an aquarium in the building lobby, an essential teaching opportunity
for cause and effect of water pollution. A pet fish named Oscar might die based on what was
flushed through the pipes.
Early on the team knew Montana had great capabilities for economic development of green
building products because of the constant challenge of transportation impacts. The team mapped
and proved building materials could be selected with a 300-mile radius of the site, a major
contribution to the Regional Materials credit in LEED when the project served as a version 1
pilot. Following “more, beyond” methodology, the focus of the team had to be life-cycle analysis
(LCA) of those materials. The talents and experience of Montana experts from the National
Center for Appropriate Technology Steve Loken and Rod Miner set a direction for continuing
the in-depth LCA research already in progress by Pliny Fisk, Center for Maximum Potential
Building Systems and Greg Norris of Sylvatica. Together with BNIM architects, the team
developed a new tool called Baseline Green for material selection and Pliny Fisk’s development
of what he termed “The NIST Principles,” still being cited and presented most recently at Living
Future Conference in May 2012.
According to Fisk, life-cycle design (LCD) is based on the following fundamental principles:
Principle #1: Recognize and incorporate self similarity and redundancy among
living systems into the built environment. This phenomenon is most easily understood
through the duplication of structure and function at many scales, i.e. biomes and watershed
systems.
Principle #2: Promote the miniaturization of the life cycle including energy, mate
rials, and water starting with the building and site, progressing only to larger
scales of life cycle use as is necessary.
Principle #3: The production stage within the life cycle can only compete with
more centralized larger scales if it becomes multipurpose and/or highly integrated.
Principle #4: Reducing the complexity of the life cycle enables it to relate more
directly to the amount of information processable by all actors involved, from
design and engineering integration to users and environmental impact.
Principle #5: Plan for an extended use phase of a building's life cycle through
the separation of structure and shell and the admission of unpredictability in
spatial dynamics.
Principle #6: Support regionalized economic loops by respecting tight knit life
cycle integration. Each stage of the life cycle becomes a part of a region's economics.
Principle #7: Create regionally relevant benchmarks through benchmark comparisons from
similar environmental, technological and cultural conditions.
Principle #8: Link what are normally disparate databases regarding individual topics(e.g.
regional economic vs. a building's life cycles) into a Life Cycle Design framework for decision
making. 4
Major change agents in campus sustainability have proven time and again to be students.
Montana State students served that role in this project. Led by student body president Jim
McCray, they taxed themselves $25 per semester to contribute to the project, demanding it be
built in the center of campus, and be named the EPICenter (Educational Performance and
Innovation Center.) Then MSU President Michael Malone hesitated, commenting at the time that
it was too grandiose. Student body leaders argued that the project was and would have ripple
effects totally unpredictable in 1996.
The work of research and development on technologies required collaboration with industry
partners. David Gottfried was rounding up corporations to join the ranks of a new industry
leadership group called the U.S. Green Building Council. Gottfried was tapped to bring those
early members to campus to help set the course for research and development. Among those 34
industry leaders who came to campus to support the entire process were corporate
representatives Rick Fedrizzi, Tim Cole, Keith Winn, and Rick Johnson.
Industry collaborations were integral to meeting a requirement of the NIST grant, including the
demonstration of new “green” products. That demonstration had to be facilitated through an
exemption by Montana legislature to the low-bid, first-cost only bidding requirements which was
garnered through the strong leadership of MSU Facilities Management’s head Bob Lashaway
and the state’s Architecture and Engineering Department’s Tom O’Connell and Russ Katherman.
The first prototype technology, a combined photovoltaic/thermal solar collector by Steven
Strong, was installed and performed at MSU’s Risk Management facility until recently when the
building infrastructure needed to be replaced and the prototype, while still operational, was
removed.
A number of other collaborations occurred that connected industry to industry with support from
universities. Fisher Hamilton’s research and development team worked on a low-flow fume
hood, now commercially available as the “Concept” hood. Other industry collaborations areas
included air scrubbers for fume hoods, large timber beams manufactured from low-grade lumber,
practical field studies on biological wastewater treatment, and new building materials using
recycled glass and fly ash that are now commercially available. Over the past decade, Montana
civil engineer and early team member Tom Beaudette has advanced the research and testing of
appropriate use of fly ash as a component of structural concrete in cold climates.
On a parallel journey of discovery were teams from Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory who were developing software to model daylighting strategies while their colleagues,
the A-Team, made low-flow fume hoods starting with cardboard models. MSU welcomed the
opportunity to share funds to push these federally-funded research projects into commercialgrade products. Available now are Radiance software for predicting and rendering lighting
environments 5 and Cost Effective and Energy Efficient Laboratory Fume Hood IB-1205,
available for licensing. 6
On MSU’s campus, a multi-disciplinary “Green Team” studied human health and productivity
issues in green buildings, specifically protocol development and pre-tests of measures of
classroom environments, in connection with Dr. Judith Heerwagen, one of the nation’s experts
on these challenges. The disciplines represented were nursing, health and human development,
ergonomics, and education. Numerous scholastic papers and conference presentations shared
lessons learned and spawned opportunities for the faculty and student researchers.
A need for the reduction of chemical use in university laboratories motivated MSU chemistry
professor, John Amend, to lead a consortium of 11 institutions from US and Canada to develop
and test green chemistry teaching modules. Evolving over the past decade, Amend’s Bozeman
firm, MicroLab, has developed “the 500-series instruments that integrate FASTspec™
technology and the most commonly used chemical sensors into an affordable lab package that
enables students to make almost every instrumental measurement required in general
chemistry.”7 The instruments' high-grade resolution coupled with innovative software currently
engages students at over 200 universities and colleges in the process of science.
In answering that original, ubiquitous question, team members often cite “scope creep” as a catch
all response. By promising research and teaching space to faculty in three departments, an
additional 90,000 square feet was added to the original 10,000 square feet. The needs of the
entire departments of chemistry, computational biology, and the Center for the Discovery of
Bioactive Compounds required the team to abandon the original goal of off the grid and taking
care of all wastes. University President Michael Malone succumbed to a heart attack at age 59
and the original project leader, VP Robert Swenson, retired. The project was closed when the
NIST grant expired in 2000.
Perhaps the real life legacy of the EPICenter is the design—a living building—that has inspired
so many other teams around the world. Addressing the diversity of ideas, opportunities, and
challenges in the 1990s, the EPICenter “dream” evolved into seeing the building as a living
organism and the team naturally embracing Montana resident Janine Benyus’ early work in
biomimicry.8 Jason McLennan has relentlessly advanced the concept until it became “The Living
Building Challenge.” Now under the administration of the International Living Future Institute,
this international standard is pushing the thinking, design, and development of green building
projects that go far beyond today’s best practices. 9
The students’ prediction was right. The EPICenter, although never built, has had a ripple effect
unlike any other design project. Bob Berkebile posed a final question as the project closed,
“Will all of these impressive successes create the level of change we had hoped to accomplish,
including our goal of restoring some of the beauty and vitality that Lewis and Clark witnessed? It
is not clear…but my hope for the future lies in the stories of personal and corporate
transformation shared by (the team). We are more capable and passionate as a result of this
journey of discovery. Of one thing I am certain. My life has been enriched by this party of
explorers…” 10
About the author
Dr. Kath Williams, LEED Fellow 2011, was honored to have traveled with this team. Often
called “Sacajawea” by the design team, Kath served as project chief in her position as Assistant
to the Vice President of Research, Montana State University. The EPICenter launched her career
in sustainability, green building projects, and LEED.11 She can be reached in Montana at
[email protected]
Citations
1. Moulton, Gary E. (Ed.). The Journals of Lewis and Clark . Retrieved from
http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu
2. Williams, K., Berkebile, B., McLennan, J., Achelpohl, K., Svec, P. (2000)
The NIST Report For The MSU EPICenter (GCR 01-807), Washington, D.C., p. 6.
3. Ibid.
4. Pliny, Fisk (2000). The NIST Principles. Retrieved from
http://www.cmpbs.org/publications/MP1.12-NIST.pdf
5. Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2012). Desktop Radiance.
Retrieved from http://radsite.lbl.gov/deskrad/index.html
6. Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2010). Cost Effective and
Energy Efficient Laboratory Fume Hood IB-1205. Retrieved from
http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1205.html
7. Amend, John (2012). The MicoLab Advantage. Retrieved from
http://www.microlabinfo.com/
8. Berkebile, B., McLennan, J. (October 1999) The Living Building. “The World and I.”
National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.
9. The Living Building Challenge (2012). Retrieved from https://ilbi.org/lbc
10. Williams, K., Berkebile, B., McLennan, J., Achelpohl, K., Svec, P. (2000)
The NIST Report For The MSU EPICenter. (GCR 01-807), Washington, D.C.
11. Williams, K. (2000). A Learning Experience of Epic Proportions. Environmental Design
and Construction. Vol 111 No 4., p. 40-45.