Currents

An Energy Newsletter for Local Governments

AIA's Top Ten Green Projects Showcase Environmentally Responsible Design, Redevelopment of Viable Brownfields

Greyston Bakery, Yonkers, NY
Maya Lin Studios, New York City, with Cybul & Cybul Architects, Edgewater, NJ
URL: http://www.aiatopten.org/hpb/overview.cfm?ProjectID=299

The Greyston Bakery offers a 23,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art production bakery on a 1.6-acre former brown-field site in an old industrial area near downtown Yonkers. Intended as a revitalization catalyst to this blighted neighborhood, new bakery functions as continuous automated machine to produce brownies and other baked products. The building is bisected by a three-level light shaft with translucent floors, then bisected again in the opposite direction by a two-story atrium, which separates the office area from the production bakery, and introduces light and air into the offices. The light shaft and atrium also allow natural airflow throughout the bakery. Outside ambient air cools the baked products as they travel down a continuous spiral conveyor.

Jury Comments: This is a cultural ecology where the design team understood that a workplace is not just a box you work in, but a quality environment to maintain workers; one in which the fundamental processes reveal the greatest potential for energy savings.

• 20 River Terrace, The Solaire, New York City
• Environmental Services Building, Pierce County, Wash.
• Factor 10 House, Chicago
• Genzyme Center, Cambridge, Mass.,
• Greyston Bakery, Yonkers, NY
• Herman Miller, Zeeland, Mich.,
• Lake View Terrace Branch Library, Los Angeles
• The Plaza at PPL Center, Allentown, Pa.,
• City of White Rock Operations Centre, White Rock, British Columbia
• Woods Hole Research Center Gilman Ordway Campus, Woods Hole, Mass.
• Back to Article