The Destination Center for the Blue Ridge Parkway has attained LEED Gold status in a rating that acknowledges the building's design exceeds the standard for high energy efficiency.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, which celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2010, stretches for 469 miles between the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. The Parkway Destination Center is in Asheville, N.C.

The Blue Ridge Parkway Destination Center, North Carolina.

In certifying the Destination Center's compliance with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards at Gold level, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded the maximum 10 points for energy efficiency.

The USGBC also awarded an additional point for besting the 60 percent standard for energy savings: The project tracked a 75 percent improvement when compared with performance for a comparable conventional building, according to Lord, Aeck & Sargent, the architecture firm that designed the center.

The center, completed in January 2008, includes a 10,000-square-foot green roof that was seeded with drought-tolerant native plants, hydronic radiant-heated flooring, a high-efficiency HVAC system with an energy recovery unit and daylight harvesting with a lighting system that is expected to reduce lighting loads by 78 percent.

Trombe walls stand in a sawtooth formation.

Among the more visually striking features are the 13 passive solar Trombe walls that stand in a sawtooth formation on the south facade.

Lord, Aeck & Sargent said the Trombe walls represent the design team's most innovative strategy.

Designers worked with Pennsylvania State University's Applied Research Laboratory to construct a high-tech computational fluid dynamics model to study air flow and heat transfer for the walls.

Named for French designer Felix Trombe, such walls are designed to absorb solar heat and release it to the interior of a building.

Inside the Destination Center

At the center, the sun heats air space that's sandwiched between the glass wall facing the exterior and an inner concrete wall. The heat is transferred into the building via vents. The Trombe walls help insulate and warm the building in the winter and cool it in the summer.

In addition to the architecture firm and Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory, the construction team for the center included the representatives for the National Park Service; exhibit designer Van Sickle & Rolleri Ltd. of Medford, N.J.; landscape architect The Jaeger Co. of Athens, Ga.; the Rocky Mountain Institute Built Environment Team of Boulder, Colo., which handled daylight modeling; MEP/FP engineer Newcomb & Boyd of Atlanta; structural engineer Palmer Engineering Co. Inc. of Tucker, Ga.; civil engineer Long Engineering Inc. of Atlanta; theater AV and acoustical consultant Waveguide Consulting of Atlanta and general contractor Perry Bartsch Jr. Construction Co. of Asheville, N.C.