Ferraro Choi has teamed with prime architect HOK of San Francisco to design the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Region Center (PRC) Laboratory and Office Complex on historic Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The 345,000 square foot facility will consolidate NOAA’s many Honolulu-area offices and labs into a single, efficient campus facility with pier facilities for NOAA’s Hawaii-based research and fisheries enforcement vessels and small boats.  Facilities will include office space, wet laboratories, marine animal tanks, and administration and support space for NOAA’s research, conservation management and enforcement programs.  NOAA has retained the Navy’s NAVFAC – PAC to administer the design, engineering and construction contracts.

Scheduled for completion in 2011, the sustainable project will seek LEED® Gold Certification.  In addition to its sustainable design, the PRC complex will place much of its program activities and spaces in three adaptively renovated historic hanger buildings and incorporate Hawaiian cultural themes that complement the NOAA mission.  Two of the hanger buildings will be inter-connected by a new building that will serve as the facility’s technology systems core and main entrance.  The first floor of the new building will include a visitor center, conference facilities, an exhibition area and cafeteria-style dining.

Key sustainable design strategies:

• Passively driven displacement air conditioning and ventilation;
• Daylighting of central and perimeter spaces;
• Use of renewable energy systems including photovoltaics (PV) and solar water heating;
• Use of seawater for HVAC waste heat-shedding (eliminating cooling towers);
• Re-use of existing historic structures to reduce demolition and landfill material;
• Use of environmentally preferable materials, such as zinc and terra cotta cladding, recycled content materials, and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified wood;
• Improved indoor air quality by providing 50% outside air;
• Reduction of heat islands;
• Native planting with little or no irrigation requirement;
• Construction waste management;
• Construction indoor air quality management;
• Fundamental and additional LEED® commissioning.

Project Design Team:

To read an article about this project, visit the following website:
http://www.labs21century.gov

For more information on NOAA, please visit their website:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency WEBSITE: http://www.noaa.gov

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