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Environmental Way building tour offers a glimpse of our high-tech future

Take a free tour while you're at the festival, and see how all buildings may protect the environment someday

This could be the ultimate green "home" tour: See paint made from Georgia clay, wallpaper crafted from tree bark, countertops shaped by an artist from concrete and recycled glass, and much more, all wrapped up in perhaps Charlotte's most energy-efficient office building (recycled, of course).

Environmental Way is both the name of the 70,000-square-foot eco-office building in University Research Park and the philosophy of the team of experts that created it.

Built in 1987 for IBM, the two-story structure sat empty for a decade before David Bowles bought it in 2009. His heating and air-conditioning company, Environmental Services, needed larger quarters. He also wanted to showcase his company's skill at creating sustainable systems and design.

You can see the results when you take the tour. The tour will begin near a bank of monitors that tell the building's moment-by-moment energy usage, then proceed through finished office space housing Environmental Services and EMCI Electrical and Cabling Services, owned by David's wife, Vickie Pennington Bowles.

Many furnishings look new but actually come from other buildings or, like the countertops, incorporate old materials in novel and attractive ways. Vickie had much to do with the interior design. Several components are made from wood taken from her family's 150-year-old farm house in southeastern North Carolina.

Want to learn more?

To learn more, visit EnvironmentalWay.com or call 704-596-7986.

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