Designed to LEED

Numerous efficient features propelled Drosdick Hall to globally recognized green building certification

Topped by flourishing planted roofs and surrounded by lush rain gardens, Drosdick Hall greets its visitors with expansive windows to bring natural light into a soaring central atrium, and attractive lighting that automatically adjusts to meet the shifting needs of students and faculty.

But beyond its architectural appeal, Drosdick Hall is brimming with strategic elements that demonstrate the innovation of Villanova’s College of Engineering. Designed in close collaboration with faculty, the building integrates experimental systems that allow students to collect real-time data, test new technologies and contribute to research, alongside efficiency features that enhance the facility’s performance.

These numerous innovations—most of them invisible to the average person—helped lead Drosdick Hall to Silver LEED certification, a challenging feat for an engineering building. Developed by the US Green Building Council, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) framework promotes healthy, highly efficient and cost-effective buildings worldwide, designed for the long term. Ultimately, Drosdick Hall represents not just smart and holistic design, but also the College’s commitment to shaping a more innovative and resilient world.

Green Roofs

Planted roofs have been well known for years as measures to insulate buildings, mitigate stormwater runoff and deflect the heat-trapping effects of development. Drosdick Hall’s three green roofs, however, go a step further.

Each is composed of a different design, ranging in soil depths of a few inches to the 20 inches that can support larger shrubs. Embedded sensors measure soil moisture, water quantity and the time it takes for rainwater to recede, and they transmit the data to loggers that students use for analysis.

“This site is not just this static site built to meet the Silver standards,” says Bridget Wadzuk, PhD, ’00 CE, the Edward A. Daylor Chair in Civil Engineering and associate director of the Villanova Center for Resilient Water Systems. “Because it’s an educational building, it is a facility that’s one part of our research lab.”

Several weather stations, some of which were already on campus, have been added to different parts of the building to document the variation that can occur in rainfall mere yards away. Then, rainwater that runs off traditional roofs is collected into cisterns and piped onto the green roofs for irrigation.

Stormwater

Besides the green roofs, several other considerations were made to blunt the impact of stormwater runoff, which can pollute surrounding waterways, contaminate aquatic and vegetative life, and overburden water treatment facilities.

“Mother Nature is always going to win, which is why a lot of the stormwater management on Drosdick is using nature-based solutions,” says Dr. Wadzuk, who has worked since graduating in 2000 to convert Villanova’s campus into a stormwater research demonstration park.

Rain gardens around Drosdick Hall funnel stormwater into temporary ponds that recede gradually. And across from the entrance is a landscaped swale, or linear depression in the ground, that slows the flow of water to let it infiltrate close to where it lands.

From a large cistern under a parking lot, collected rainwater is filtered and pumped inside for flushing in bathrooms, which also are equipped with low-flow faucets.

Between all the conservation measures, half a million gallons of water are saved every year, enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Energy Conservation

LEED criteria are challenging to meet for any building, but it was particularly impressive for an energy-intensive engineering facility to notch 52 points on its way to Silver status.

Lab buildings typically have many exhaust fans and require constant changes of fresh air to minimize contaminating research samples, says the lead architect, Kyle Kernozek, of BLTa—A Perkins Eastman Studio. To mitigate the extra energy use in Drosdick Hall, a highly efficient heating and cooling system adjusts temperature using occupancy and carbon dioxide sensors that communicate with the thermostat. Chilled beams filled with cool water and radiant heaters near the windows temper the air only in areas that need it.

“Heating and cooling is maybe a misnomer, but you’re really trying to focus where you spend your energy,” Kernozek says.

Sophisticated window glazing allows daylight to enter while blocking invisible infrared and UV wavelengths of light that would overheat the interior. And upgraded exterior insulation enhances the building’s efficiency by more than double the building code requirements.

Taken together, the measures reduce the expansion’s carbon footprint by the equivalent of 5 acres of mixed hardwood forest.

Customized Energy Use

The LED lighting used throughout the building consumes less energy than fluorescent lights and emits less heat, saving energy needed to cool it. What’s more, lighting is programmed to maximize what Kernozek notes as “daylight harvesting.”

In essence, lights turn off automatically when there is enough sunshine. But if shades are lowered to deflect heat, sensors tell the lights how bright they need to be. Occupancy sensors determine where lights should turn on so energy isn’t wasted on empty corridors or classrooms.

There is also an intriguing level of individual control. On most desks and shared tables, individual lamps and fans are built in, so people can use only what they need to be most comfortable.

“You have that immediate control just in your space, which is especially important in a shared space in these large, open areas,” says Ryane Hoban ’23 MBA, Villanova’s senior project manager on the expansion.

Though many of Drosdick Hall’s green ideas came straight from the design team, faculty members also were asked for input, especially in conceptualizing how the building’s stormwater management and green roofs would factor into students’ education. Dr. Wadzuk says she had been brainstorming with her colleagues for at least five years, and she was thrilled to see so many of their ideas implemented.

“That’s the wonderful part about being a professor—I just get to think of ideas,” she says. “We really sat around and chatted and said, ‘What if we did this, and this, and this?’”