By
CYNTHIA DRUMMOND Sun Staff Writer
CHARLESTOWN
- Megan Moynihan and Andrew Baer are developing strategies for
designing buildings that can better withstand the threats posed by
climate change.
Moynihan,
an architect, and Baer, a project manager, are a husband and wife team
who moved to Charlestown from Manhattan to live in Baer's family summer
house on a nearby salt pond. They co-founded Oyster Works design
firm in 2008, and have since been recognized for projects such as the
Charlestown Wine and Spirits package store on Old Post Road, with its geothermal
heating and cooling system and other energy-saving features.
In the small, open space inside a building on Old
Post Road that was once Charlestown's one-room school house, the couple
designs and builds residential and commercial buildings that are not
only environmentally sustainable, but produce real savings in
operating and maintenance costs. Moynihan and Baer call their
approach "sensibly green."
We want the measures that are taken
to improve energy efficiency to provide a return on
investment," Baer said.
Models of several proposed buildings sit on tables throughout the
room. One is a daycare center and another is the new home of the
Tomaquag Museum, the location of which has yet to be determined. There
are also a couple of houses. One, to be built in a zone prone to
storm surge, is elevated far off the ground.
"The top of the first floor is 19 feet above the base flood
elevation," Moynihan said, noting that with municipal zoning
regulations limiting the height of the building to 35 feet, designing
this home was a challenge. "How do you make a two story
building look nice and still look beautiful in the context of all these
pitched and gabled roofs, when, as you can see, they don't have height to
have a two story building and a gabled roof," she said.
In addition to incorporating more conventional measures such as
elevating buildings off the ground, Moynihan and Baer also focus their
attention on a lesser-known but equally important measure: helping
water-soaked buildings breathe. "What we're really
looking at is how you can build with materials that when they do get wet,
can dry out without creating either structural damage or unhealthy
conditions in a house, which we see a lot," Baer said.
Believing that trying to completely
waterproof a building is futile, Oyster Works uses a technique called a
"rain screen system," a breathing wall that lessens the damage
from water entering a building by giving it some place to go back out.
"It's going to get through. It's a simple fact. The
force of the rain, the capillary action, the pressure differential is
going to pull water into the building," Baer said. "A
rain screen system basically recognizes that, and creates a cavity behind
the siding, before the wall, so that when water gets in, it drains out...
It's something that we feel is important, so we're incorporating this in
all the buildings that we're doing around here."
Oyster Works also uses landscape architecture techniques that
improve storm water drainage and help prevent erosion.
"I think how we deal with the
landscape can really help mitigate the damage caused by climate change,
especially with rising sea levels and these catastrophic storms,"
Baer said. "Where
we see an opportunity to do that, we really embrace it. It's cost
effective over the long term, because you're not constantly battling
having your shoreline disappear."
At the new YMCA sailing center at Camp
Fuller in South Kingstown, the firm will restore the badly-eroded
shoreline using plants such as native grasses to help stabilize it.
"It's not simply decorative, but it's meant to be restorative
in that we will, over time, get rid of the invasive species, bring back
native non-invasive species and stop the erosion," Baer said.
"This will help stabilize the shoreline, and by controlling
the storm water, we will again be stabilizing the shoreline, because we
will be reducing the runoff."
Moynihan noted that the addition of designated pathways would
reduce foot traffic in other erosion-prone areas. "We've
connected the buildings with a series of either wooden or gravel pathways
that will keep campers more on the path and less on the ground
surrounding it, so less erosion," she said.
The sailing center has been elevated to nearly 14 feet above base
flood elevation. Also incorporated in the design are foundations
that will allow flood waters to pass underneath without hitting and
damaging the buildings. Construction is expected to begin in the
fall.
Moynihan and Baer traveled to Florida and New Orleans to see how
those flood-prone areas had modified their building codes and practices
to produce buildings that would better withstand storms and flooding.
They have incorporated many of those building practices into their
Rhode Island projects, all of which are now designed with climate change
in mind.
"We understand there's the chronic effects of
sea level rise, then there's the effects of the catastrophic storms, so
we get it," Baer said.
@CynthiaDrummon4
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