63rd Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial Tournament
How the Green Pavilion came to fruition is a unique tale about collaboration. Peter Ripa, the Colonial Tournament Director, desired to strengthen Colonial’s relationship with nearby Texas Christian University. He especially wanted to showcase TCU’s green initiatives alongside the golf tournament’s own efforts to become more environmentally healthy. He met Dr. Michael Slattery, Director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at TCU, and the two began thinking of the best way to display their sustainable initiatives.
Their initial discussions spawned something neither imagined. Slattery quickly called in two of his most sought after graduates, Jonathan Kinder and Dave Williams. Both hold TCU Master’s degrees in environmental science and have since formed Prairie Designs, LLC., a company continuing their research and design of green roofs. Kinder and Williams served as project managers from design through installation for the Tournament. They continuously integrated the various aspects of science, technology, architecture, and sustainability, working with diverse collaborators.
Kinder and Williams immediately tapped into their own academic mentor, consulting with Dr. Tony Burgess, advisor for their theses about green roofs. Burgess encouraged a new group of student researchers, the Green Roof Applied Projects Team, to focus on the logistics of rapidly designing and installing a green roof system. Guided by Burgess’s counsel the team determined what combination of container, plants and soil would work best within the limited time and budget. Cameron Schoepp and Chris Powell, both art professors at TCU, have also mentored Kinder and Williams in their invention of a living roof tile system. The two artists brought valuable expertise and experience, and they quickly coordinated design liaisons with Anderson Anderson Architecture, based in San Francisco, creating the architecture and engineering for the Pavilion.
After an intensive design charette led by Peter Anderson, Mark Anderson, Schoepp, and Powell, ideas rapidly began to flow. They realized that the structure could become grander than they had imagined, but also more expensive. It was here that NextEra Energy Resources stepped in and footed much of the bill. The group had previously established a relationship with TCU’s Institute for Environmental Studies by partnering in a research grant known as the TCU-University of Oxford-NextEra Energy Resources Wind Research Initiative.
Several other groups collaborated throughout the process, providing diverse kinds of expertise and materials. They include Home Energy America, Veristeel, John Bennett, Advantage Steel, and Big Belly Solar.
The Green Pavilion serves as a first step toward a sustainable, mobile structure that includes natural systems as part of the design. The Pavilion showcases current progress in sustainable design and the essential professional and research collaborations that are underway. It is an example of how imaginative teams can design solutions to current environmental challenges.
