Masonville Cove
The best way to ensure a healthier planet is to teach children about “going green” at an early age. This is the objective for the Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center. Working with Living Classrooms, the National Aquarium, and local communities, FTLA served as environmental consultants on this educational center, a project that demonstrates how sustainable buildings and landscape features can be easily integrated into a traditional building form. Innovative architectural and landscape features will reduce energy consumption in a number of ways. Within the building, geothermal technology supplies the heat source while solar energy heats and lights the building. Special insulation and energy reducing fixtures will also be standard throughout. A key focus of the landscape design will be rain barrels supplying rain gardens and bioretention ponds. Children will be able to use these to study ways in which polluted stormwater can be cleansed through a natural filtering system and contribute to cleaner streams and rivers.