When philanthropist Clay Mathile approached Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership (LHSA+DP) to create Aileron, he was clear it had to be “green.” Mathile had recently departed a career with Iams Pet Foods, building the international brand from a small, regional business and helping launch a companywide mentoring program that later inspired his more expansive Center for Entrepreneurial Education in Dayton, Ohio. Adopting a mission to strengthen communities through the education and inspiration of its entrepreneurs, the center quickly outgrew its rented facilities. It needed a new name and a central campus that exemplified future-thinking best practices. In this pursuit the highly functioning Aileron was born.

Mathile partnered with LHSA+DP for its unique “design as interpretation” methodology. In projects across the architecture and design spectrum, LHSA+DP starts by developing an interpretive program that holistically guides design moving forward. Delving deeply into Mathile’s mission and through intensive research and brainstorming, the LHSA+DP team unearthed key qualities characterizing an entrepreneur’s journey: individuality, big picture, dream, focus, leadership, change, decision making, out of the box, nurture, risk, perseverance, and passion. Using these qualities as interpretive themes, the team began envisioning a 70,000 square foot building and a 114 acre landscape that would manifest the journey in all its aspects. Designing Aileron to embody its themes necessarily meant equipping it with sustainable solutions. Any entrepreneur’s journey today involves taking responsibility for future generations. To ensure Aileron’s green success, internationally accomplished engineers Buro Happold were brought on board.

Landscape: A Natural Fit

Turning onto Aileron’s entry drive, a relationship between people and the environment becomes clear. The drive wanders through naturalized former farmland fostering a sense of escape. In the distance, wild growth lines the acreage’s perimeters. In the foreground, the drive passes tended grasslands, wetlands and geometric arrangements of maples and pear trees. Fragmentary glimpses of the Aileron building begin to appear through views framed by landforms and trees. Anticipation builds as the drive approaches its endpoint where drivers can re-power their hybrids by plugging into charging stations before walking site-reused stone paths to the facility.

Though clearly a constructed environment, the building appears as a continuation of its landscape. Like a herd collectively roaming the topography, the building is composed of differently sized pavilions; each one, respectfully rooted to the ground, is uplifted by its specially engineered “hovering” roof. Entire facades of glazing provide views straight through the building’s components proposing them as mere frames for the blue sky behind them and revealing that the same exterior limestone cladding, quarried 20 miles from the site, also finishes its interior.

A journey around the building connects outdoor experiences, each harbored in a courtyard defined by the building’s shape -- a pleasant garden, a stone path across a reflecting pool, a trailhead to an excursion where signage elucidates sustainable features: the closed-loop geothermal wells that heat and cool the facility, the photovoltaic arrays that heat all its hot water. In several places, the outdoors enter the indoors. Often, transitions are nuanced. Patios’ stone pavers continue through thresholds into the building. At other times, transitions are explicit. A bench carved from a site-felled tree penetrates the façade glazing, challenging the separation of a patio and indoor break-out space.

The feeling inside Aileron is almost yogic, a retreat into relaxation and focus. In a central orientation area, an exhibit about Mathile’s life shares space with a voluminous, daylight-filled rotunda. Cozy furniture congregates folks around a fireplace and hallways branch from here in opposite directions. Their walls of striated limestone, mimicking slats of hardwood surfaces, elongate their vanishing points, inviting forward steps. Wandering into gatherings is casually done, as changes in surfaces and furniture subtly divide meet-up spaces from walkways. Meanwhile, conference rooms are more-clearly defined; still, each opens onto a patio or loggia providing welcomed breathing room during daylong sessions. Throughout, interpretive themes are either quietly implied by the architecture’s grace, as in a pathway’s fork asking for decision making, or more overtly pronounced by graphics inscribed in the setting, as in the word focus spelled across the reflection pool’s floor in diffuse, concentration-begging letters.

A Role Model in Sustainability

Long before pen hit paper, Clay Mathile and the design team began discussions about constructing the building with minimal environmental impact. Planning for site material reuse was among the first steps. Cleared trees were milled into furniture and all excavated rock was fit into landscaping, pathways and driveways. More than 20 percent of the remaining construction materials -- wood siding, concrete, steel, materials for partitioning and signage, and the aforementioned limestone -- were acquired from local Ohio sources. Additionally, certified wood and low-emitting materials were used. Seventy-five percent of construction waste was recycled, and today Aileron continues recycling, accounting for most of its waste.

A healthy place nurturing healthy ideas, the building’s indoor environment is essentially a living system. Fresh air flows at all times through operable windows and a locally manufactured under-floor system uniquely engineered to suit a low-height building. Meanwhile, low-VOC paints help keep the fresh air fresh along with a green housekeeping plan, no-smoking policy and CO2 monitoring system. Heating and cooling is geothermally provided, and temperatures are continuously monitored and adjusted. Solar panels heat the building’s hot water, and any additional energy required for operations, including the automated lighting system, which self-adjusts according to natural light levels, is purchased through a company that funds wind turbine construction. Seventy-seven percent of the entire building and 91 percent of its offices have views to daylight, and in most enclosed rooms, motion sensors switch lights off when the rooms are not used. All told, Aileron is LEED Gold rated, saves 45-50 percent in electricity, and is 100 percent free of both gas lines and refrigerant cloroflourocarbons.

Surrounding the building, landscape elements bolster Aileron’s health. The property’s welcoming prairie grass is not just pretty. Compared to regular sod, it requires minimal maintenance, thus reducing energy expenditures. Similarly, beauty is only half the pond’s story. When Midwestern storms pass, water not collected from rooftops for 50 percent of the site’s use is directed to the pond, where it is either filtered before returning to streams or pumped into a system that irrigates a remarkably small two of Aileron’s 114 acres. In the building, both potable water from Aileron’s well and greywater flow through sensor-activated, low-flow fixtures, reducing waterwaste; exiting the building, it is treated through Aileron’s own EPA-approved mound treatment system before returning to the aquifer.

An Entrepreneur Gives Back

In developing Aileron’s interpretive program, LHSA+DP identified one last characteristic of the successful entrepreneur: giving back. Unlike its partner characteristics, giving back was not found in research but in Clay Mathile himself. Between boardroom meetings and presentations, Mathile led the design team on long drives to places he found inspiring; this is where his vision unfolded. Mathile wanted a home for his giving back effort, a place where entrepreneurs could be able to see the greater potential of their enterprises to create jobs while responsibly contributing to a sustainable world. As a role model, Aileron needed to be green: Environmental stewardship is fundamental to entrepreneurial achievement.