Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center Wins Healthcare Award in LABC’s Annual Architecture Awards!

By Katie Matthews, Project Manager, Argento/Graham

Every year the Los Angeles Business Council holds Architectural Awards to celebrate architectural achievements that help to serve as a reminder of the relationship between social issues through the build environment. The winners each year, showcase design teams embracing innovative designs standards that start to address the social issues and enhance the quality of life in Los Angeles.

Argento/Graham had the pleasure of working with the County of Los Angeles, SmithGroup and many other teams on the Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Center. A/G supported the team on the sustainability and LEED consulting for four of the buildings as part of the Rancho Los Amigos Rising 2020. We are proud to have helped the Wellness Center achieve LEED Gold and the Outpatient Building and Jaqueline Perry Institute earn LEED Silver under the Healthcare rating system. We provide ongoing support to the team to track its energy consumption in comparison to the design over the course of its occupancy. Rancho Los Amigos continues to act as an international leader and deserves to be recognized for its ongoing innovation strategies in the Los Angeles community.   

Congrats to the team on this achievement!

To see the other winners at the Architectural Awards this year, check out the LABC page!

Eataly LA receives Honor Award at the 9th Annual Sustainable Innovation Awards

A/G is pleased to announce that one of its longtime clients and projects, Eataly and its Los Angeles store, was presented with the Honor Award in Water Efficiency at 8th Annual Sustainable Innovation Awards hosted by USGBC Los Angeles. Annie Argento, Duke Graham, and Bobby Almeida from A/G were there to accept the award along with key team members from Studios Architecture and Clune Construction.

The Los Angeles store, a LEED Gold certified retail project, is located at Westfield Century City, a LEED Gold certified shopping center. It is the 4th US location to earn LEED certification. Chicago, Boston and downtown New York previously earned LEED certification. It is tradition at Eataly to give each store a unique theme — Los Angeles' is water and special focus was given to conservation because of the extreme drought conditions Southern California has experienced in recent years.

The centerpiece to this theme, and what makes the project deserving of this honor, is a gray water treatment system, which collects and treats water generated onsite from HVAC condensate and lavatories and reuses it for sewage conveyance and onsite irrigation. The gray water system was designed to be put on display at the main entry or "front of the house" to not only showcase the innovative technology by Aqualoop, but so the system could be used as an educational tool for the community and other project teams looking to install gray water systems. 

Additionally, in the back of the house kitchens that support the four onsite restaurants, nearly a dozen food counters and a caffé, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are projected to be saved annually. This was achieved through careful specification of water-efficient kitchen equipment and appliances, particularly for the water guzzling equipment such as combination ovens, dishwashers and ice machines. According to the LEED process water savings calculator for LEED Retail, the combination ovens, commercial dishwashers, and self-contained ice machines save over 5 million gallons of water annually or 67% when compared to the projected consumption of the established baseline. High performance, low flow pre-rinse spray valves were also installed, aerators on kitchen hand sinks to reduce water use further, dual-flush toilets, pint-flush urinals, and low flow lavatories on meters.

The approach to water conservation on this project was comprehensive and an overall success. A/G is proud to have worked with such a capable and dedicated team. A big congratulations to everyone involved, especially Eataly, Studios and Clune! 

Roddenberry Entertainment earns its first ENERGY STAR certification; Outperforms the LEED model and similar U.S. buildings on measure of energy efficiency

Roddenberry Entertainment Inc. in Los Angeles, CA has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR® certification for superior energy performance. This first ENERGY STAR Certification reflects Roddenberry Entertainment’s continued commitment to excellence in energy efficiency and environmentally sustainable practices. The building is also certified Gold under the LEED for New Construction rating system.

Argento/Graham supported Roddenberry Entertainment through the certification process by benchmarking the building in ENERGY STAR’s portfolio manager.  The building received a high score of 93.

“Improving the energy efficiency of our nation’s buildings is critical to protecting our environment, “ said Jean Lupinacci, Chief of the ENERGY STAR Commercial & Industrial Branch. “From the boiler room to the board room, organizations are leading the way by making their buildings more efficient and earning EPA’s ENERGY STAR certification.”

ENERGY STAR certified buildings and plants are verified to perform in the top 25 percent of buildings nationwide, based on weather-normalized source energy use that takes into account occupancy, hours of operation, and other key metrics. ENERGY STAR is the only energy efficiency certification in the United States that is based on actual, verified energy performance Curious about actual, verified energy performance and predictive energy use, Argento/Graham analyzed the LEED model results alongside the actual energy data required to benchmark the building. The analysis showed interesting results: the predictive annual solar production and the actual production only differed by less than 10%, or 25,997 predicted kilowatt hours compared to the recorded of 24,850 kWh. The predicted use in electricity was very different. The predicted building use was 71,300 kWh while the actual was 42,424 kWh. This difference of -40.5% indicates that Roddenberry Entertainment uses significantly less power than its peers which may be attributed to occupant behavior or differences in actual operating schedules and number of occupants as compared to assumptions made while the project was in the design phase.

To date, tens of thousands of buildings and plants across all fifty states have earned the ENERGY STAR. For more information about ENERGY STAR for Buildings and Plants, visit www.energystar.gov/buildings

Argento/Graham is an official service provider for ENERGY STAR portfolio manager and is ready to help benchmark your building.