TerraHaus Groundbreaking05/18/11
Demolition and Re-Use
Unity College
September 22, 2011
TerraHaus Site Plan • I
Expanding Habitat & Educational Resources
TerraHaus, completed in August 2011, is Phase I of the SonnenHaus Village project, a three building development of super energy efficient buildings constructed to the Passive House standard. TerraHaus is the first student residence hall on any campus in the US to receive Passive House certification.
The Site Plan and landscape design of TerraHaus also initiate a campus wide shift towards an ecologically based framework for development at Unity College. This framework is characterized by combining the principles of landscape ecology with the functional requirements of a working landscape, in this case, a landscape that supports the college’s curriculum focused on Sustainability Science.
The newly constructed TerraHaus landscape expands habitat resources for wildlife on the campus grounds, including replacing an acre of lawn with a field of native grasses and wildflowers, connecting this new field to existing edge habitat and adding edge habitat by linking a new grove of Sugar Maples to an existing allee along Quaker Hill Road. Mown lawn is limited to areas for recreation, movement (paths), and building maintenance, and a small garden plot gives TerraHaus students a space for growing vegetables.
