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Hennebery Eddy - Firm Profile

kyle — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:58:00 +0000

Written by Jeff Cole for NEEA's BetterBricks initaitive

Hennebery Eddy Architects are on a roll. This past fall, their net zero energy PCC Newberg Academic Center won the 2011 Portland AIA Sustainable Design Award. A year before, the firm’s Willamette University Ford Hall project won a 2010 Portland 2030 Challenge Design Award, As Built category and a 2030 Challenge Unbuilt award for PCC Newberg. This Portland firm is receiving ongoing recognition for the design of high performance buildings and BetterBricks decided to schedule an interview with founding principal Tim Eddy, to ask about their practice. Here’s what we learned:

Hennebery Eddy was founded in 1992 "From the very beginning it (sustainability) has been a part of what we do, trying to design great buildings—sustainability is just a part of a great building." Tim Eddy studied architecture during the 1970s and his professional outlook has been influenced by the oil shocks that effectively book-ended that decade, the early passive solar sensibilities and design initiatives of the time, and the teaching and writings of Ed Mazria. As Tim explained, “from 1970 to the early 80s, it was hard to study architecture without being heavily indoctrinated. While some firms have pursued sustainability from a branding standpoint, at Hennebery Eddy, we're a design firm where sustainability is one more of our tools. We haven't felt a need to change."

Services span architecture, interior design, and planning and the firm is active in a variety of markets: higher education and institutional work is a major focus, representing 30-50 percent of fee income, but Hennebery Eddy also delivers major public and municipal, corporate, hospitality and urban housing projects. A particular area of interest is the influence of landscape and parks. The firm has regularly been invited by landscape architects to add buildings to projects. Two historic preservationists on staff support an ongoing interest in historic work. 93 percent of the 30-35 person staff are LEED APs or green associates.

Early recognition for projects with sustainability elements:

The C-TRAN Evergreen Transit Center was delivered with a strong focus on incorporating sustainable materials. The story of these materials became part of the overall story of the transit shelter, which received a Portland AIA, Design Citation Award, in 1999.
The firm designed the 122-unit Buckman Terrace project, completed in 2000 for Pat Prendergast and Ed McNamara. Said Eddy: “we found a common interest in sustainable design with Ed, and we worked closely with Tom Liptan of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) to install an eco-roof on part of the building. This was one of the first green roofs in Portland, probably the first on a wood-framed building. We also provided on-site storm water management, for the entire project, on a very tight site. The building had a highly insulated envelope and was the first apartment building in Portland to separately meter hot and cold water for all units.
“We had completed a Master Plan for the Tualatin Valley Water District’s Beaverton site and were asked by Water District CEO Greg DiLoreto to submit an architecture proposal for the new headquarters building. We proposed a theme of significant potable water savings, as the District promotes to their customers, and also suggested LEED certification. In 2005 the resultant building became the 8th LEED Silver building in Oregon, incorporating a 40 thousand gallon, below grade, rain water storage tank, with rain water recovery equipment displayed within the building, accessible for viewing by school tour groups and others.
By the time Hennebery Eddy completed a below grade parking garage, for Portland’s First Presbyterian Church, in 2007, sustainable design " had become mainstream." The parking structure was covered by a large green roof and garden. Interior ceilings were painted white, allowing a 15 percent reduction in fluorescent lamps. The project received a 2007 Excellence in Concrete Award.

Typical of many early projects, industry-wide, with a sustainability focus, these Hennebery Eddy projects highlighted materials and stormwater strategies. The following, more recent projects reflect a greater emphasis on energy performance and demonstrate application of some of the load reduction and passive design strategies that Tim Eddy identified as early interests of his. In the case of Ford Hall, and most significantly, PCC Newberg Center, these design strategies have been applied to achieve contemporary performance challenges, specifically the net zero energy goal of the 2030 Challenge.

Ford Hall

Willamette University’s 42,000 square foot academic building, Ford Hall, was completed in September 2009. The LEED Gold certified building uses 58 percent less energy than a comparable CBECS baseline building and is the first Hennebery Eddy project to incorporate a large photovoltaic array (25.5 kW). From the university’s perspective it is the highest performing building on campus, combining excellent energy use with virtually no occupant concerns with respect to comfort. As previously mentioned, the project received the 2010 Portland 2030 Challenge Design Award, As Built Category.

Tri-Met South Terminus

Hennebery Eddy was approached by TriMet to explore the greening of the South Terminus of the Downtown Transit Mall. The agency’s initial program for the site called for a couple of 3,000-4,000 square foot buildings to house system equipment. The architects decided to approach the site more comprehensively: first addressing all storm water on site; second, rather than including systems buildings of the type and scale found on TriMet’s other light rail lines that could seem out of scale in the context of adjacent planned development and existing infrastructure, much smaller scale, less costly, prefabricated equipment enclosures were used shrouded bya structure designed to elegantly wrap the enclosures andsupport a 50-60 kW SolarWorld PV array (large enough to generate all electricity required at the site, with some surplus to the grid). Additionally, the support poles for the light rail catenary lines are designed to accommodate Oregon Wind vertical axis wind turbines, when they are available and ready to go. The project received a Portland AIA, Unbuilt Citation Award, 2009 and a National ASLA, General Design Category Award of Excellence, 2011 (as part of the ZGF Partnership team for the Portland Transit Mall Revitalization).

PCC Newberg Academic Center

When Hennebery Eddy began work on the PCC Newberg Academic Center, they knew that Linda Gerber, PCC Sylvania Campus President, had already considered a net zero energy plan for the entire Sylvania campus and had begun planning another net zero energy building. They also knew that the Newberg Academic Center project offered the "best possible equity between the roof area and building energy use to achieve net zero". The design team worked closely with the future occupants to reduce building energy loads and to integrate passive systems. Explained Eddy, “At PCC Newberg, we were, in effect, rolling back the clock to consider strategies used for years before the era of refrigeration and cheap energy”. The resulting building, with a large roof and a huge porch, provides the necessary area for PV integration to meet the NZE goal. The building EUI, which will be met by the PV array, is 28 kBTU/sf-yr. Winner of the 2011 Portland AIA Sustainable Design Award and a 2010 Portland 2030 Challenge Design Award, As Designed Category, details about the project can be found here.

Occupant Behavior and Net Zero Energy Goals

Load reduction strategies are essential, to meet net zero energy goals, and must address owner assumptions about equipment use. For example, PCC Newberg’s computer lab baseline called for one desktop computer per workspace. The design team proposed a thin client server approach, which was a greater change than the school was prepared to make (at that time). The compromise strategy was the use of laptops to reduce energy demand. The project also addressed a college standard that initially called for eight vending machines in the building. With the active participation of the design team, to assess needs, that number was reduced to three, with the proposed use of vending miser controls, to closely manage the energy use of the remaining machines.

Hennebery Eddy successfully addressed occupant needs, in this project, to reach net zero loads, but Tim Eddy points out that the impact of occupant behavior for this project was not as challenging as it is in other occupancy types: staff and students are mostly transient, with limited opportunities to accumulate personal equipment that requires added energy use. In most commercial environments it's tougher to address accessory items brought to work by occupants and an agreed upon set of group ethics is necessary to maintain minimal miscellaneous plug loads.

When asked about the potential for the firm to design more NZE projects, Tim Eddy responded that it’s inevitable, but that either incentives or donors to support the installation of sufficient renewables are required.

Integrated Design, Energy Performance and Performance Tracking

For projects pursuing aggressive energy performance and for certain system solutions, Hennebery Eddy tends to work with familiar team members, employing an integrated design and integrated project delivery strategy involving project “partnerships” with major consultants, who are generally at the table from day one. As a project evolves these consultants are well positioned to accommodate design changes while maintaining focus on performance goals.

For example, the initial plan to incorporate natural ventilation into Ford Hall was carried well into the design process, until it was set aside over typical, lingering concerns about noise, air quality, etc. The design process allowed the team to quickly respond to these client concerns, while remaining focused upon the project energy performance goal, by substituting displacement ventilation without the need for major design revisions.

At PCC Newberg, Hennebery Eddy involved the Energy Trust of Oregon from the start and was able to include the project in the Trust’s Path to Net Zero pilot. Interface Engineering, also part of the PCC Newberg and Ford Hall teams, provided ongoing modeling support, including computational fluid dynamics, to maintain a project-specific balance among the trade offs of different design strategies.

The 2030 Challenge and requirements of the 2030 Commitment are leading firms, including Hennebery Eddy to increased tracking of the performance of built projects. The firm maintains contact with clients, such as Willamette University’s campus facilities management and employs internal green bags, where they have pulled utility bills from projects to assess performance.

Sustainability

When asked if he thought Hennebery Eddy’s increased recognition of the energy performance and sustainability of their projects had become a major factor in attracting new clients, Tim Eddy responded, “it is always a factor on public solicitations, particularly public higher education. Public building projects usually target sustainability and energy performance. On private jobs, it is always expected that you can work through sustainability issues. Even clients whom you might least expect, are tuned into sustainability now (while they might not have been five years ago). But when it comes to projects with really tight budgets, first cost can still trump all else.”

On the Path: Rating the Energy Performance of Commercial Buildings

kyle — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:50:41 +0000

For more than a generation, EPA fuel economy labels have allowed consumers to compare the potential environmental impact of a large selection of vehicles. CAFÉ standards have provided a complementary, regulatory platform (albeit a leaky one) to improve vehicle performance. While energy codes have been a regulatory effort to effect building energy performance, building owners and occupants have not had a comparable labeling system. Those missing labels are now almost in reach, beginning with the implementation of a few localized building rating systems that strive to use market-based forces, providing opportunities for:

Owners and operators to compare buildings
Potential buyers or tenants to review rating labels and documentation and gain additional insight into facility value and potential long term operating expense
O&M staff to make better informed decisions about maintenance activities

Early in 2010, the City of Seattle mandated building performance ratings and is phasing in program implementation through 2013 . The rating mandate covers public buildings greater than 10,000 square feet, private non-residential buildings over 50,000 square feet, and multi-family buildings of more than five units. Washington State has a very similar program with the same timeline. The City of Portland has proposed launching a program to rate commercial buildings larger than 20 thousand square feet. New York City, Austin, Texas and the State of California are all in the process of implementing programs. The great majority of these programs rely upon EPA’s Portfolio Manager to assess operating performance.

These local programs have generally used utility billing data to assess and compare operating performance. ASHRAE’s Building Energy Quotient system, abbreviated as Building eQ (“BeQ”), a more comprehensive approach that assesses both as designed and in operation performance, is positioned to become a U.S. national standard.

The BeQ approach, similar to European systems, includes two rating categories. An “As Designed” asset rating assesses building components and the design energy model to consider energy performance potential. The second, an “In Operation” rating, uses billing data to measure actual performance. Together, these two components can be used to assess the divergence between estimated/potential and actual performance.

The “As Designed Asset” Rating

Measures the energy-efficiency quality of physical, as-built, building and system components; rating the building, not occupancy and operation
Documents energy design features
Calculates source EUI based on normalized operations, occupancy and usage patterns
Is useful for code-compliance and determining whether design criteria are met (AEDG. ES, LEED, Green Globes)
Provides quality control by requiring a certified modeler to do the rating
Estimates design energy end uses and benchmarks to ASHRAE Standard 90.1 w/Appendix G and provides quality assurance through ASHRAE modeling protocols
Rates envelope and lighting systems design with COMcheck
Requires field verification
Is relevant for real estate transactions.

The “In Operation” rating

Is meant to improve operations and can be used to manage building portfolios over time
Is based on measured energy use, adjusted for weather
Requires a site visit to verify performance
Documents key energy efficiency operational features
Indicates ENERGY STAR labels or LEED-EB earned in specific years
Lists information about completed energy efficiency retrofits and building commissioning
Provides optional information on potential for additional energy efficiency improvements
All ratings will be dated and renewal will be encouraged

The best BeQ score indicates a zero net energy building. As a result, a BeQ rating does not correlate with the more commonly known ENERGY STAR rating and scoring, which is based on the statistical energy use of a building, as recorded in the CBECS database. While it is not possible to make a connection between the two ratings, ASHRAE has developed a certificate that will report the ENERGY STAR score of the buildings that have earned an ENERGY STAR rating.

Building EQ Market Timing

According to Lilas Pratt, ASHRAE Manager—Special Projects:

“ASHRAE is exploring a business plan along with the volunteer/staff structure needed to support that plan for the BeQ program. Because we anticipate this program moving the industry ahead towards net zero energy buildings, we want to explore all possible options before we make a full scale launch. We especially want to make sure that the program is built on a strong technical foundation.”

The BeQ operational rating and asset rating are proceeding on somewhat different timelines. During a January meeting, the ASHRAE committee responsible for the operational rating system approved a Fall 2011 launch, targeting initial review of two projects per working day. A permanent committee has been established and details are being refined, as the necessary supporting materials, including forms, procedures, and on-line platforms, are being developed.

The asset rating system is in pilot mode, testing procedures to provide consistent comparisons with baseline buildings that are equivalent to the CBECS baseline (the most robust baseline currently available). Multiple modelers are assessing the same building, validating the ability of the rating system protocol to generate consistent results. Pilot asset rating results are expected in September, and at that time, decisions will be made about next steps.

Complementary Resources

To support the “As Designed” rating program and to help ensure consistency, ASHRAE, in collaboration with the U.S. affiliate of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA-USA) and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), has developed a new Building Energy Modeling Professional (BEMP) certification program. The program certifies individual ability to evaluate, choose, use, calibrate, and interpret the results of energy modeling software and individual competence to model new and existing buildings and systems. This will go a long way toward a much needed standardization of modeling procedures.

ASHRAE has also developed a Building Energy Assessment Professional (BEAP) certification program in collaboration with representatives from ASHRAE’s Building Energy Quotient (BeQ) program, IESNA, NIBS, SMACNA, and TABB; to certify individual ability to audit and analyze residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, including determining project scope, collecting data, analyzing building performance, interpreting results, evaluating alternatives, submitting recommendations for energy conservation measures, and assisting with the implementation of these recommendations.

Both the BEMP and BEAP certification exams are widely available at testing centers throughout the United States.

UW Team Wins $1.2 Million Grant to Radically Reduce Hospital Energy Use

kyle — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:21:52 +0000

June 19, 2010

CONTACT
Catherine O'Donnell / University of Washington
206/543-2580
cath2@uw.edu

Seattle, Wash. - Sen. Maria Cantwell has announced that University of Washington researchers will receive a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that will help them reduce energy consumption in Pacific Northwest hospitals by more than 60 percent.

The work of the UW team reflects a fundamental game change. Once upon a time, it was enough to create a building that was energy efficient. Now the goal is net zero: the structure creates as much energy as it uses.

“Hospitals and health facilities are second only to fast-food restaurants in energy consumption. They consume approximately four percent of all energy used in the U.S., so lowering the amount is very important,” said Joel Loveland, a UW professor of architecture who directs the Integrated Design Lab at the university. He and Heather Burpee, a UW research associate in architecture, lead Targeting 100, which is named for an energy use index (EUI) and reflects the goal of significantly increasing energy efficiency. The EUI is the total amount of energy used by a building (electricity and natural gas) per square foot of floor area, measured on an annual basis to establish baseline energy use.

Together with experts who aided the initial research, Loveland and Burpee will model energy strategies for hospitals in seven cities besides Seattle: Miami; Phoenix; San Francisco; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Chicago and Minneapolis.

The UW team’s initial strategies have been included by NBBJ Architects in the new patient South Tower under construction at the UW Medical Center. Also, ZGF Architects is considering more extensive use of these strategies for the patient tower addition to Seattle Children’s Hospital. Mahlum Architecture is considering them for their Living Building hospital for Peace Island Medical Center in Friday Harbor.

The work addresses the 2030 Challenge instituted by Architecture 2030, an environmental advocacy group. Architects, engineers and building owners are adopting the goal, which targets a greater reduction in energy use every five years. Buildings constructed by 2030 are to be net-zero energy consumers. For buildings that will begin operating between 2010 and 2015, the goal is a 60 percent reduction from standard operational use.

The UW team’s research so far demonstrates that there is little additional cost – approximately 2 percent – for their strategies.

Part of the group’s work is based on contemporary Scandinavian hospital designs that consistently use one quarter to one half the energy of their American counterparts. Along with energy efficiency, Scandinavian strategies include abundant use of daylight from windows that may be opened and closed.

The UW researchers found heating the biggest target for energy reduction. In the U.S., more than 50 percent of hospital energy is used to heat space or water. It’s ironic, says the researchers’ report, because a study of a 225-bed hospital in the Puget Sound region found that “hospitals generate enough heat from internal mechanical or electrical sources to need no additional heat until the outside temperature drops below 20 degrees.” And in the Seattle region, that kind of cold rarely happens.

This new kind of hospital integrates goal setting, energy modeling and the means to verify performance from initial conception to building operation. It also targets three key systems with a number of strategies:

Architecture:

Increase use of daylighting.
Use solar heating when possible.
Balance heat loss and environmental comfort with high-performance equipment.

Building systems:

Separate tempering of air temperature from ventilation air.
Optimize heat recovery from space heat and large internal equipment.
Turn off equipment not in use.

Plant systems:

Use advanced heat recovery at the central plant with heat pumping or enhanced heat recovery chillers and highly efficient boilers. Also use ground-sourced heat exchange.

Researchers emphasize that their strategies work in concert: to get that 60 percent increase in energy efficiency, the means must be bundled.

The UW award builds on health design research at the College of Built Environments’ Integrated Design Lab for Puget Sound. The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), through its BetterBricks initiative, has supported the lab’s work the last four years.

The department of energy grant is one of 58 totaling more than $76 million funneled from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The goal is more energy-efficient buildings and training for technicians who maintain commercial buildings.

Along with Loveland and Burpee, the research team includes Solarc Architecture and Engineering Inc., NBBJ architecture firm, TBD Consultants Inc., Cameron MacAllister Group, Mahlum and Mortinson Construction. Substantial matching support from NEEA’s BetterBricks program.

To read “Targeting 100,” go to http://www.betterbricks.com/graphics/assets/documents/Targeting100_ExecutiveSummary_Final.pdf

For more information, contact Joel Loveland at 206/616-6566 or loveland@uw.edu; Heather Burpee at 206/616-6566 or burpeeh@uw.edu.

An Interview with Peter Clegg, Feilden Clegg Bradely Studios

kyle — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 02:43:39 +0000

By Brian Libby for NEEA's BetterBricks

Peter Clegg is a senior partner with the London architecture firm Feilden Clegg Bradley, having established the practice with Richard Feilden in 1978. Educated at Cambridge University and Yale University, he is a visiting professor at the University of Bath previously taught at the University of Oregon. Clegg remains actively involved in a spectrum of research, design and education.

His firm’s designs has been recognized with numerous awards including in 2008 the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize. Clegg was senior partner in charge of the architectural developments at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the new Central Office for the National Trust in Swindon. Current projects include the Leventis Art Gallery in Cyprus, several new schools and colleges, a new business school for Manchester Metropolitan University and a substantial Higher Education scheme at Broadcasting Place for Leeds Metropolitan University.

Clegg was also the primary author of Feilden Clegg Bradley: The Environmental Handbook. Published in 2007, the book chronicles the firm’s experience over the last three decades, while also serving as a primer on leading-edge sustainable design acumen. He has served as a member of the National Trust's Architecture Panel and is a founder member of the British Council for School Environments.

Recently Peter Clegg visited the Pacific Northwest for BetterBricks-sponsored talks in Portland and Seattle. He spoke with BetterBricks at the University of Oregon’s White Stag Block shortly before delivering his Portland lecture.

BetterBricks: What do you do best? What is your primary skill set?

Peter Clegg: I guess I like the complexity of my job most. I do a wide variety of things. I get involved in the design of a number of projects through my office. I get involved in design criticism of other projects through a government organization that is there to actually raise the quality of design. And I get involved in charitable work in Africa, building schools.

My practice does a lot of work in Uganda. I was just out there three weeks ago opening a new school building that we built in four weeks—actually they built it in four weeks. I attended a graduation ceremony there. It’s just a great counterpoint to what we’re doing in the UK because a lot of our work in the UK is schools-based. To build a school in the UK you need 25 million pounds, it takes three or four years, it’s a huge kind of hassle right from start to finish in a way. You build a school in Uganda it costs you 50 thousand pounds and they just build it. It’s great. So there’s that aspect of my work that enriches my life. And I enjoy the teaching work that I do.

This (lecture) is in a sense an offshoot of the teaching work, because I used to teach at the University of Oregon. That’s how I know Charlie Brown of the Energy Studies and Buildings Lab. And I’ve maintained contact with my friends and colleagues in the Pacific Northwest. It’s great to come along and exchange ideas. That’s what this trip is all about, really. Although you feel guilty about the carbon footprint and the carbon in the air miles, you kind of feel this two-way inspirational communication is something that we have to keep a place for in the world even though we have to cut down our air travel.

And traveling around the US or the world to discuss the challenges of climate change and energy-efficient design is arguably part of an architect’s responsibility.

We have to get more involved, particularly in terms of energy and sustainability. Our carbon footprint, a lot of it is down to how we use energy in our buildings. And we can really dramatically reduce that if we put our minds to it. But the critical thing is engaging occupants of buildings and making them understand that they have a role to play just as the professionals have a role to play. We can design really low-energy buildings, but they often don’t perform as we designed because people actually are not using them properly, or perhaps we design them in too complex a way. But the critical thing is to get people engaged in the process, and the business, of reducing CO2 emissions. That does mean more awareness and lifestyle changes.

There’s a great movement happening here in the Pacific Northwest that is perhaps more encouraging than what’s happening in the rest of the US. And it’s closeer to where I think we are in Europe in terms of a general awareness of environmental issues. And in fact, some of the work being done by ESBL on daylighting analysis is very interesting to me and is actually ahead of us (in Europe).. Maybe I can pass on some of that experience to other areas. It’s good to have that kind of exchange of information.

What do you make of the new building labeling efforts going on in the UK and how has it affected your practice?

I think it’s absolutely essential. It’s amazing: we’re already seeing results. What we have to do for all public buildings now—there has to be what’s known as a Display Energy Certificate, which means in the foyer of that building, for everyone to see, is a very clear statement about the energy use of that building, both in terms of its carbon footprint, the kilograms of carbon emitted per square meter per year by the building, and also how good that figure is in terms of an A to G rating. For us it simulates the kind of energy performance rating you get when you buy a refrigerator or a television set. If it’s ‘A’, it’s very good. If it’s ‘G’, it’s useless. It’s embarrassing for the government for its newest building to have a ‘G’ certificate, but that’s what it’s actually got. And so the government is looking at its own energy performance, and everybody is looking at energy performance.

It does mean that when that figure has to be filled in on a year-by-year basis, someone is looking at whether it goes up or down. It’s kind of education by embarrassment, really. So I think it has changed public perception. It’s changed the way architects and engineers start thinking about things. I can now boast about a building we built ten years ago and it's got a 'B' rating. That’s great. Ten years ago it was really ahead of its game. On the other hand, I’ve designed a building which has got a ‘G’ rating, and I want to know why. We discovered why, which is that the maintenance of the filters in the air supply system wasn’t working. It makes you want to go and understand what’s wrong, or to pat yourself on the back if you get things right.

It also goes back to the fact that increasingly architects have a responsibility to keep track of their designs and how they work out after the building is completed.

You can’t just walk away. Our experience tells us that the easiest time to save energy in a building is during the second year of occupation. By then you discover a lot of problems. You’re going through the commissioning and the detailed analysis. You’ve had all those discussions with the occupants to try to get them to understand how the building works and how they can reduce the carbon footprint of what they’re doing. If you stay with the building for two or three years, you can usually make a step change in people’s performance as well as the building’s. But you’ve got to stay with it.

I’ve just learned some results from a building we did five years ago. Suddenly the performance has gone sky-high, and we don’t know why. We haven’t figured it out yet. But we will go back and figure it out and talk to the people and actually work to make sure we get that high performance next year.

Could you also talk about the increasing role of research in design? An architect or integrated design team’s responsibility is related more today to scientific information than it used to be.

I always think of architecture as halfway between art and science. In a sense, research is considered relatively slow and precise. Quite often the design process is messy and often counter-intuitive. You’re shooting off in different directions and trying things out, going at a very fast speed compared to research which is slow and considered. In a sense diametrically opposite disciplines, but they’re both absolutely essential to good quality sustainable buildings.

First, I think it’s very important for us to have people with different mindsets on the same team. You have one person who is actually intuitive and throws out ideas, and other people who test those ideas and considers them carefully. You could say one is more of an artistic mindset, the other a more engineering mindset. It’s often important to be able to work between those two opposing principles. What’s always fascinated me is we’re treading this tightrope between art and science. The artistic side makes you create wild, intuitive hypothesis, and the more disciplined research side allows you to formally test and document.

We’ve always done a lot of research either with academic institutions or engineers in order to test our ideas thoroughly. The best way of testing your idea is actually building a building and testing it – learning from it. One thing I keep getting my practice to do better is to record the research. Quite often we’ll find something out and get as far as you need to do to prove whether you’re right or wrong, but then we don’t record and document, which is part of the academic research discipline. It’s a way of presenting it to the rest of the profession.

For instance, we recently developed a tool that allows us to quickly look at an intuitive idea–we wanted the window patterns on the façade of a building to look as though the façade had been ingrained by water running down it. When the water starts in a sliver and then spreads out, you get different patterns coming out on a façade. We wanted a building to look like that. But we also wanted the right number of windows to provide a view, to provide daylighting, and to avoid solar overheating. We knew that this is a multifaceted building. To get this patterning in the façade to work, we developed a computer program that would look at all those variables and very quickly give us a lot of iterations from which we could select a design concept that suited our initial idea and met the performance needs of the building.

Thomas Hacker, who got his start in the great architect Louis Kahn’s office, told me he remembers Kahn saying that private architectural practice was a place to teach, and the classroom was a place to practice design. How do you see the relationship between teaching and practicing?

I’ve always believed that education and research and architecture should be fully intertwined. I like the idea of a practice becoming a school of architecture. Why don’t we think about all that freedom you have at a school of architecture and bring it into a practice? You have to focus it more because you’ve got to be disciplined by time constraints and making money and all those kinds of things, but the kind of freedom of thinking at a school of architecture and the disciplined research is something that needs to happen in a practice. In other words, you have to be practicing all the time in your practice.

As the profession becomes more science and research-based, how do you still achieve that soulful quality of great design that architects like Kahn represent?

Kahn would have the pre-eminent architect to deal with an energy crisis. He really would. Although he despised pipes and wires with great vitriol, he also, in some ways, celebrated the way you got daylight into buildings and materiality in materials like concrete versus timber and how they play off each other. I think there’s a whole range of work that has come up from California to Oregon to Vancouver, things like the work of Patkau Architects, have a very Kahnian material quality in their approach to daylight. He’s someone I always cite in these critical issues of daylight and ventilation, which is also celebrated in his work, and how to approach the mass of building.

One of the things we preach in the UK and over here is the integration of thermal mass into buildings, which is certainly something in the UK climate we are completely wedded to. We don’t like lightweight buildings.

It seems like the public at large, or maybe even the building industry too, doesn’t completely understand the importance of radiant temperature and thermal mass in achieving comfort.

I think that’s one of the problems we have. I don’t think we’re training the current generation of architects as well as I was trained and Charlie Brown was trained. I think somehow we have lost that connection between practice, teaching and research. Which I think is a great shame, and I’m committed to trying to reform those links.

Are there differences you see in how designers approach energy efficient design in the UK versus the US?

I think of the Pacific Northwest as being at the forefront of thinking in terms of environmental design in the US. And the Northwest is relatively close—interestingly close—in climate to the UK. We’re pretty close in terms of energy commitments. What we have in the UK that’s different is a much stronger regulatory framework. And we have acknowledged long term commitment to reducing carbon emissions. There’s an overriding one that says 80% reduction by 2050. There are ones that say all new homes must be carbon neutral by 2016, and all new buildings must be carbon neutral by 2019. All those are incredibly tough targets to meet. Closer to home, we’re talking about all new schools having to have between 10 to 20 percent of their energy come from renewable sources onside. We’re meeting ever more stringent targets in the knowledge that they’ll get even more stringent. Having made these commitments, the profession is really feeling the pressure as a whole. Whereas here, I get the sense that there are some architects and engineers who are leading the way, and the rest of the 90 percent are waiting around to see what happens.

Your talk is part of the Transformational lecture series and called “Transformational Architecture”. What does the word mean to you?

It is an interesting word, particularly because most of our work at the moment is in schools. In England we’re rebuilding a lot of our schools, and one of the buzz terms is “transformational change” in education that is led by the design of the schools. It’s a very significant brief to be getting as an architect: “Create us a school that transform the education that we can provide.”

It’s almost design as social engineering.

Absolutely, but in the best possible way. We’re looking at ways you can get away from the 60-square-meter classroom. Why do all kids have to be taught in groups of thirty? Is it something to do with how far you can see the blackboard? There isn’t a clear rationale for a thirty-person class. Why aren’t we teaching some subjects in groups of 100 and some subjects in groups of one or two? Within this new thinking about education, we could by allowing flexibility within the design of the building you can encourage transformation in the way education is delivered. There are some really exciting concepts about how school design can impact education.

At the other end of the spectrum, are there any particular leading-edge technologies in energy-efficient design that have caught your attention?

There are things that are interesting me at the moment. Screening technology is one. We’re designing an art gallery with apartments above it, which kind of helps the development finance the art gallery. It’s in Cyprus, which is a new climate for us. We haven’t designed for a Mediterranean climate, where light is intense and where there is a scarcity of water. One of the things we’re doing is designing a beautiful solar screening system for all the windows. It’s a punched bronze-finished aluminum panel that lets in about 15 percent of the daylight. The pattern of it, when seen from a distance, is taken from a photograph of an olive grove, which is actually a huge part of the flora in Cyprus. It gives you a beautiful, dappled light through very large areas of glazing. It always has excited me how you emit light into buildings and what you emit and how you emit it. It gives us so much flexibility in how you control the mood of the building with where the light comes from.

An Interview with Ulf Meyer, Ingenhoven

admin — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:13:25 +0000

By Brian Libby for NEEA's BetterBricks. An excerpt of this interview originally appeared in Sustainable Industries.

Ulf Meyer is an accomplished architectural critic and author who has been published in major newspapers and architectural magazines both in Germany and abroad. He is the editor of ARCH+ journal and serves as the German correspondent for World Architecture. NEEA's BetterBricks caught up with Ulf during a recent visit to Portland to discuss the next wave of green design.

What is your overall approach to designing buildings in the 21st century?

We at Ingenhoven believe form should follow performance. You've probably heard that form follows function, but we feel it's important to go beyond that.

I also believe that nature is the great role model. While human engineering is amazing - nuclear submarines and iPhones - if you think about the wonderful ways your hands and eyes work, for example, it's really amazing. Nature has very efficient forms and great beauty and aesthetics that go hand-in-hand. That's something we aim for.

Your firm has designed numerous buildings around the world with double-skin facades, like RWE Essen in Essen, 1 Blight Street in Sidney, and the Breeze Tower in Osaka. Is this the wave of the future?

I don't know if there's any other firm in the world that has had to deal with all the different sustainability rating systems: Australia and New Zealand, the United States, Japan. We have buildings in all these system rated at the top.

The space between facades acts as a thermal buffer in winter and summer. The first skin is airtight and the second is not. It's similar to how clothes help us adjust to seasons. A shirt will keep us warm in winter and shade us in the summer. It's not just the fabric itself; it creates a layer of air between the clothing and the body.

The other major advantage of double skin is it allows you to have stack ventilation, a chimney effect. It works without any mechanical means. You can get an airflow that will pull the exhaust air and make it disappear into the sky.

Along with double-skin facades, another key to Ingenhoven achieving non-air conditioned buildings seems to be creating intensive stack ventilation effects.

For 1 Blight Street, the building was raised by three floors at the bottom. The raising on stilts allows the public realm to find its way back onto the site. Operable glass louvers will serve as air intake. The air will moves up and pulls the exhausted air from the offices with it.

But in the case of other projects, like the Stuttgart Main Station, you couldn't employ that same stack ventilation strategy because the building is underground. Is it true that the trains themselves help ventilate the space?

Yes, it will be neither heated nor cooled. The trains will push and pull air out of the station. If you do it right, the trains can provide air conditioning for your building.

The station itself also has an intriguing form where it reaches the surface. Was that a case of bio-mimicry?

The unique shape came about through the famous German engineer Frei Otto. It's a high performance concrete. They use nets and fabrics to weight the concrete and see how they want it to behave. It's shapes that find their own way, just like nature does, a kind of bio-mimicry.

Europe has more stringent rules about offices and daylight. How much does that help efficiency?

One of the contradictory demands of sustainable design is you want light to penetrate your whole room but not summer sun. Having a double skin façade protects the inner façade from these elements.

In Europe, no desk may be further than about seven meters from the façade. In America they use these deep floor plates which are good for real estate investors but not for sustainable design and the occupants access to daylight.

In your lectures, you often suggest there may not even be such a thing as sustainable design. What do you mean?

The more I study this, the more I believe designing buildings in an energy efficient manner is great but it's not enough. If we all saved 20 percent of our energy consumption tomorrow, we'd still be causing a lot of trouble for the planet. I think looking at building performance is not enough. We should look at how our cities are designed. Both booming cities and shrinking cities are inherently unsustainable. This is a bigger issue than what architects deal with.

Even shrinking cities are exploding two-dimensionally. Sprawl has even accelerated in some areas. If we allow this kind of dramatic loss of urban fabric replaced by big boxes and parking lots-we create problems as architects we'll never be able to fix.

In the last 60 years, the U.S. population has doubled, and the urbanized population has tripled. Yet urban density went down dramatically.

If architecture can help to save some of the mess we're in, I think it involves reinventing urban design. All through the 20th century it was done using color markers on paper-residential here, industrial here. Frankly, that no longer works. We have to think in 3D. Urban design is a dead profession. We have planning, but planners are not designers.

You may think this is not a problem in Portland with your Urban Growth Boundary. But living in the Midwest [in Kansas and Nebraska], I can tell you that it is a creeping problem. Portland is the laboratory nationwide but it still has to deal with the same problems.

What can be done to green urban design?

There are a lot of things you could do. You could disallow above-ground parking garages. Why not prohibit one-story buildings altogether? We have restrictions to prohibit the height of tall buildings, but I think prohibiting low buildings should happen instead. Make Portland car free and build more rail lines. Don't slow it down.

I'm sure you familiar with the 2030 Challenge. How would you characterize the best approach or strategies to get to net-zero carbon buildings? What do you think our greatest challenges are to getting there?

Ultimately, I think the rating systems are great but they have their limitations. They're voluntary. Why should sustainable design be a rich man's toy? Why isn't it a prerequisite for everything we do? Why can't we make LEED platinum our code? We have rules for our car performance. Why not for our buildings?

What role does the Integrated Design process play in achieving buildings with high levels of efficiency (+50%)?

The team process and the collaboration is one in the same. Then there's the content of the design, the actual design activities: the goal setting, the give and take. If the opposite of that is designing a building and last minute consulting with the engineer, that's silly. But frankly, I also think that the influence of engineers sometimes is too strong. I have a feeling that architects let design slip into the hands of others.

What is happening in Europe with Deep Energy Renovation? How is Europe addressing the opportunities for energy savings in the existing building stock?

Ultimately there are things that make a building more or less sustainable that are hard to measure. For example nondescript floor plans. Why are lofts attractive? They have load bearing walls, open structure and an open floor plan. It can be something else tomorrow. In Germany we overdesigned our floor plans in the '70s and '80s. The bed can only be here because there's a power outlet there? That's silly. It's unsustainable. We should design less determined floor plates.

What are some projects around the world that represent to you the best in energy efficient and sustainable design?

It's from a competitor. There's a building, the federal environmental agency in Dessau, Germany by sourbroof and hutton. They did everything possible. That could be a big mess. But as you walk into that building, you go, "Ahh. This is nice. Cool, vegetation, wood, color, diffused light." Physically it affects you. It talks to your body.

What about the role of tenants/ building occupants? What needs to change there to make sure buildings that are designed (or undergone deep renovation) maintain savings over time?

In a way you want to change people, but you don't want to be God. A building should be intuitive and work without too much of an explanation. Architecture has a tendency to be authoritarian. Ultimately that's off-putting.

What do you think needs to change in the U.S. to ensure a more sustainable future?

Here's a broad statement. This country needs to develop a better understanding that the abundance of space is what makes this country beautiful and rich. People look around and say, 'We still have Oregon. Portland could be 10 times larger.' But people come here to look at the nothingness. There's beauty and value in both the farmed areas and the unspoiled areas. We don't come here to look at strip malls. If you spoil your abundance, you're screwed economically and socially. The abundance of land is what makes this country great.

What has inspired you in both your career path and your commitment to sustainable design?

Critiquing a building as a journalist is very similar to critiquing a student's works. You want to see qualities and weaknesses. The transition [to designing buildings] wasn't hard. What I like about architecture is it talks about so many aspects outside itself. It talks about ecology, law, climate, politics. Architecture is a political art. Fine art you can avoid. You don't go to the museum. But you are surrounded almost 24/7 by architecture.

What do you see as future energy trends in the sustainable building market? What about future business opportunities?

I hope there is a trend to think of sustainable design more on the urban scale than the object scale. Even if buildings are great performers, if the city fabric doesn't support it, it's still no good. Generally people think growth is good and shrinkage is bad. Why isn't it the other way around? What cities are great? It's New York and San Francisco. They have confinement, a natural topographic confinement. This city doesn't have that, so it needs to have an artificial one. The Berlin wall was awful, but urbanistically it was great.

Performance-Based Design

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:28:15 +0000

The Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design and Construction strives to be the first of its kind: an urban mid-rise Living BuildingTM. The vision of the Bullitt Foundation and its director, Denis Hayes, is to develop a game-changing place that creates a ripple effect to change the way designers, cities, and occupants think about their buildings.

One of the many unique factors of the project is the development process and the fact that the players have been willing to think differently at each step of the way. In essence, the team that enables this kind of performance includes the designers/developers, the tenants, and also the city. "We all feel like we have a chance at promoting much larger change if we can get others to do this kind of building," says Chris Rogers, principal at Point32, the project's developer .

Big ideas about how to reduce and capture energy drove the highly iterative design proecss. According to Rogers, this was largely due to the openness of the team. The architects were willing to let the performance vision drive the design, allowing for a highly collaborative relationship where the engineers were as much in the drivers seat as the architects.

The Cascadia Center is a 50,000 SF commercial structure in Seattle's central district slated for completion in late 2011. The team includes Point32, The Miller | Hull Partnership, PAE Consulting Engineers, and general contractor Schuchart as well as the University of Washington's Integrated Design Lab with support from the BetterBricks initiative of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. The Bullitt Foundation is the anchor tenant, but will only occupy half of one floor; other leases are in negotiation.

A Performance Driven Team

The process was almost entirely driven by the project's energy goals, which are to meet the net-zero energy imperative of the Living Building Challenge.

Rogers says that these energy goals were the "most intriguing part of the process and has influenced every step of the design." Before the design team was even hired, the Integrated Design Lab was engaged to develop an energy profile for the hypothetical building.

When the Miller | Hull/PAE design team began its work, aesthetic design was not up for discussion until every aspect of the technical performance was understood. Craig Curtis, partner at Miller | Hull, says the team refers to it as "performance-based design."

Big ideas about how to reduce and capture energy drove the highly iterative design process. According to Rogers, this was largely due to the openness of the team. The architects were willing to let the performance vision drive the design, allowing for a highly collaborative relationship where the engineers were as much in the drivers seat as the architects.

The idea is for the building to not only be a point of departure from a performance standpoint, but also from a regulatory perspective for the local policy agenda.

Similarly, the contractor was brought on early and was able to weigh in regularly with cost checks to keep the concept within a reasonable budget.

Major energy savings will be achieved through a highly efficient envelope (preassembled and delivered to the site air tight); automated shading; and heat recovery on the mechanical and ventilation systems. As the architecturally imposed loads headed towards net zero, the internal equipment load took over. The team realized they needed an expert in computer and server loads.

The building and systems designs were so highly calibrated that every tweak threw the energy concept slightly out of balance. Joel Loveland, Director of the Integrated Design Lab, explains the need for a "facile modeler as part of the engineering team to pick up the results of small and nuanced energy changes during Schematic Design."

The performance requirements even affected the program. Early plans included a coffee shop on the ground floor, but the internal loads were too high to meet the net zero goals, so a restaurant tenant was out of the question.

Loveland describes Miller | Hull and PAE as a dream team. "Everyone has been incredibly dedicated, way beyond the call of duty. It is pretty exceptional."

An Open Minded City

In addition to the highly capable and dedicated design and development team, the City of Seattle has made the unique process all the more manageable.

Last fall, Seattle passed an ordinance that allows twelve projects to go through a process that identifies regulatory obstacles to achieving the Living Building Challenge. Rogers characterizes it as the city essentially saying, "Let's use the Cascadia Center and 11 other buildings to explore how our current codes and methods for supporting the building design and development process could be modified to achieve better performance."

Given that the major energy consumers are expected to be the computers and server systems, the team is exploring new ways of sharing these services across companies with the expectation that tenants become more collaborative.

Part of the process is for the design team to help the City to think differently about its regulatory structure and to understand performance-based design. In the case of the Cascadia Center, the City will allow a zoning exemption for a larger rooftop solar array (essential for meeting net zero targets) than is typically permitted in urban areas.

The idea is for the building to not only be a point of departure from a performance standpoint, but also from a regulatory perspective for the local policy agenda.

This is essential because, as Curtis points out, "everything about the design is unique to this particular location in the world."

Flexible Occupants

The final members of the performance team are the occupants. Design and technology can only take the performance so far; the final increments of energy savings depend on the tenants of the building.

Occupant behavior is a fundamental factor in meeting the net zero goals. Plug loads are the primary occupant-imposed energy loads and are expected to be half of typical building use.

The design team developed a survey for prospective tenants, to determine how many people expect to bike to work, shower at the office, and the length of each shower. The energy and water impacts of these habits will ensure availability of excess water for irrigation and the ability to not exceed energy use allotted to water heating. In this way, every individual action plays into energy assumptions, to ensure adequate resources to meet other needs. If someone takes too long a shower, the plants in the greenhouse will bear the consequences.

Given that the major energy consumers are expected to be the computers and server systems, the team is exploring new ways of sharing these services across companies with the expectation that tenants become more collaborative.

One idea that is being explored is an internal cap and trade system among tenants, by which a high energy user may be able to trade credits with a light energy user.

The Opportunity

Ultimately the goal is a building that inspires more of its kind. While some may dismiss Living Buildings as one-off solutions, only possible with an owner who values innovation and is willing to pay more for it, The Cascadia Center team is committed to a design solution that is broadly applicable to the industry and thus has the potential to be transformative. At every decision point, the team was thoughtful about the replicability of a particular design. The initial design concept included an unusually shaped floor plate with atrium to optimize solar potential, but the shape would be difficult to emulate (and far exceeded average construction costs) so a more conventional floor plate was selected to fit the urban grid and still maximize daylight.

As Rogers says, "The goal is for the building to become a catalyst, not to stand alone" The project is being designed for a 250-year lifespan, to adapt to evolving needs and technologies, chances are it will soon be standing among similar buildings that it inspires.

An Interview with Amanda Sturgeon

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:53:11 +0000

For For more than a decade Amanda Sturgeon has been a leader in the emerging sustainable building field. Working in both the private and public sectors through the course of her career, Sturgeon has been a leader helping convince clients and colleagues to embrace energy-efficient design. This is why Sturgeon received a BetterBricks Award for Architect in 2008.

Sturgeon is an architect and was previously senior associate with the Seattle office of architecture firm , where she served as co-director of sustainable design nationally. Prior to Perkins + Will, she was a sustainable building specialist at the City of Seattle, and before that, was an architect with the acclaimed Seattle firm . While at Mithun, in 2002 Sturgeon served as project architect for the acclaimed, LEED Gold-rated on Bainbridge Island.

Over the last five years at Perkins+Will she certified the first LEED platinum project in Washington State and was a winner of the first Living Building Challenge competition for the Department of Ecology, Northwest regional office project.

Sturgeon was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Sydney. While in Australia in the mid-1990s, Amanda worked on the Newcastle University School of Nursing building, which won the Royal Australia Institute of Architects (RAIA) New South Wales chapter's Environment Award. Sustainable strategies included geo-thermal heat retention/rejection, natural ventilation, shading and lightshelf daylighting strategies.

Amanda was a founding Board member of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. Last year she has also served as a member of the Greenbuild Program Committee for the U.S. Green Building Council, and she was previously a member of the AIA Seattle board of directors. Sturgeon has taught sustainable design at the University of Washington's School of Architecture and has recently become a Living Building Challenge Ambassador. She is credited with re-starting the AIA Seattle Committee on the Environment in 1999 as well as the annual What Makes It Green? conference.

Recently BetterBricks spoke with Sturgeon to discuss what's changed and what the future looks like.

BetterBricks: What's changed since you won the BetterBricks award in 2008?

Amanda Sturgeon: When I won the award I had just become the co-director for sustainability for Perkins + Will nationally. We have 21 offices worldwide. There's been quite a lot of growth for me personally in terms of working out strategically how you lead that many people from diverse geographic locations toward a sustainable design attitude.

Also, when the economy took a turn in 2008 there was so much uncertainty. How will the economy affect green building? Will owners be able to afford them now? Luckily, I've seen the opposite turn out to be the case. People are realizing green building is a really sound investment and as construction costs come in below the expected budget more sustainable features are being added to the projects.

What encouraging signs do you see?

I think in this economy people are reassessing their priorities. I've seen a lot of interest in sustainability… the federal tax credits, the new energy policy, grants for geothermal and solar. I think that's going to kick-start use of some new renewable sources we haven't seen before in buildings.

What is the architect's role in the process besides design?

We need to take our role beyond our own projects and offices and toward the green building profession as a whole. We need to be more collaborative and share our resources and research. We released two research tools last year. One is called the 2030 e2 Tool, which helps guide professionals on achieving the 2030 Challenge. At Greenbuild, we also released the Precautionary List - a list of chemicals commonly found in building materials that are scientifically known to be harmful to human health. We identified alternatives to most of these materials.
Our goal is to release two research projects each year that are shared with the public on our website. We want to transform the marketplace, and we want to have shared knowledge. Global climate change is an urgent issue, if we don't share resources we won't succeed in turning it around.

What's the best argument to help clients and the architect profession take that extra step?

Talking about how green building will save on energy costs is still the best argument. We still have some clients that aren't convinced about climate change, and many do not want to take the risk of being a leader in a new technology. So saving money over time is the way to get them to do the right thing. Benchmarking and post-occupancy evaluations are key to making this persuasive, if we track how our building actually performed we have better resources to show future building owners and clients how successful energy efficiency strategies will be.
There's a lot of opportunity to educate building owners. With more of an emphasis on energy audits and evaluations, we might have the opportunity to educate some owners on the benefits. The knowledge is out there, but it's not widespread enough. Some architects are better educators and some are better designers. It's a burden to be the one to bring that to the surface. But there's a huge potential for growth.

An Interview With Norm Strong

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:35:10 +0000

In 2007 Norman Strong, managing partner ofThe Miller | Hull Partnership, a venerable Seattle architecture firm, received a BetterBricks Award in the Advocate category.

"Norman has been ahead of the curve, leading his firm and the architectural community forward," the judges wrote of Strong when he won the award. He is working at a national level to promote change, a challenging and time consuming effort that is commended."

A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Strong helps oversee business operations for a company that received the AIA's national Firm of the Year Award in 2003 and has won more than 130 design awards. Since its beginnings in 1977, Miller | Hull has long been a recognized leader in sustainable design, which an unprecedented five projects listed in the AIA Committee on the Environment's prestigious annual Top 10 Green Projects list.

BetterBricks: You have been a local and national leader in sustainable design for some time. How has your career changed or progressed since winning a BetterBricks award two years ago?

Strong: I just celebrated thirty years with Miller Hull. Thirty years ago we were talking about basic good design that used concepts like passive solar, and we were doing it before we even knew what sustainability was. I think in the Pacific Northwest in particular, as designers, we now have the opportunity to go back to that day. As an individual and as part of a firm, I'm still committed to changing the way we do business. It's going to be a continuing goal for many years.

How have advances in energy-efficient design or technology affected what you do as an architect?

We're taking a lead in rough (preliminary) energy modeling now. Instead of engineers doing it at the end of a phase, we're getting our hands dirty with software programs like Revit and EcoTech to better understand performance implications of design decisions. We're way to the left of the decimal point. We're looking at things at a broad scale, not down to the thousandths of a degree. We can make decisions early on using those tools. But none of the technologies replace both the commitment and the common sense that needs to be factored in.

We are using a number of software programs as applications to our Revit (BIM) based design. Right now we are using "Grasshopper" for alternative energy studies and EcotTech to model both lighting and energy consumption pieces of a project. There are many applications out there for architects to explore; it just depends on the project.

What has been your biggest challenge or something you'd like to see change?

I think the thing that hasn't changed enough, unfortunately, is there's still the perception that climate change is not real. That's still a real concern. Two years ago I was on the road a lot for the AIA promoting the Architecture 2030 Challenge goals. I got a lot of comments and questions like, "Is this a hoax?" I'd say, "I believe in the science. If you don't that's fine, but what's wrong with saving people money?" Unfortunately, the perception is still out there. But, as architects in the industry we have to be responsible and we know we need to do something.

What projects have you worked on since winning the award that have been shaped by new innovations in energy-efficient design?

We're attempting to do two Living Building projects right now and are really focusing on those: the Bullitt Foundation Headquarters in Seattle, and the Cascadia Community College Wetlands Education Center. Both are in the predesign phase.

Another recent project, the University of Washington Conibear Shellhouse and Student Life Center is not a Living Building nor certified as a LEED project, but it is a very sustainable natural solution. It is a very innovative building that uses natural ventilation in a new way, coming off the water through the skin, all the exercise areas and up these vent stacks. The only parts of the building that are fully air-conditioned are the computer areas. The thing that was interesting was the occupants wanted to do natural ventilation. The athletic department said, 'we live outdoors, why don't we create our spaces like that?'

For another project, the South Lake Union Discovery Center, in a very short time period, we used a very integrated design process and then opened a sales center within nine months using prefab materials and systems. We're also looking at how it can be disassembled and reused in the future. The idea of adaptive reuse is critical. And we've started to focus more on it. There are so many projects that need to get renovated in a sustainable manner. We're seeing that market is there. You can't achieve the broad carbon reduction goals by just building efficient new buildings.

How are you able to walk the talk and demonstrate to clients your design values?

Since 2007, our firm has officially gone carbon neutral. We had an audit by Seattle Climate Partnership. We've bought some offsets through Bonneville Environmental Foundation's "green tag" program to offset some of our air travel and our work commutes. It's been very interesting. We're a firm of about 50 people. When we looked at our paper consumption in a given year, we were shocked to learn how much we use. As a business, though, we can specifically say how much now. And once we realized our commutes should be factored in, we offset that through green tags.

I've also become involved nationally as a co-chair of the AIA's 2030 Commitment. Architecture firms are not just agreeing to meet these goals but reporting back on their projects, both the great ones and the ones not doing so well, and we try to learn from each other. That's been one positive trend: people are starting to band together.

The 2030 Commitment is a guidebook for how firms can structure themselves to produce sustainable design. How does that complement the Architecture 2030 Challenge?

The Architecture 2030 Challenge is an initiative of the nonprofit organization Architecture 2030. It is fantastic. They've done a great job of making the whole issue real, both to politicians and also everyday people. Still, you commit but you never report. That's the big difference in the AIA program. It's real results verified through reporting.

What do you see in the future for LEED and other green building rating systems?

LEED is a fantastic system and has done a great job of making the general public aware. But we need to explain to the public that even LEED may not meet energy goals. We need to get way beyond LEED in our thinking. The ratings and the plaques are fantastic. But the New Buildings Institute website has a report funded by the USGBC that talks about projects at a Gold or Platinum level that don't come close to some of the energy efficiency goals that the AIA has.

What challenges have you seen in making sure your buildings' energy efficiency performs as designed and keeps performing over time? Are your tenants willing parties in this?

As designers, we no longer can just get a project done and move on. We need to understand how our buildings are performing and step up to the plate. If something's not performing, why?

One thing we're finding is that we can design very smart buildings but if the tenants or occupants don't understand that building, there can be lots of unintended consequences, like choosing to override systems. To avoid that, we are doing post occupancy interviews. That's more a part of our culture now.

And of course it takes occupant cooperation as well.

Definitely. I've been in many sustainability charrettes where I say, "How are you going to change the way you occupy the building? We can't have a plus or minus degree. We need a wider temperature swing. Are you okay with that?" It has to be a new way of thinking and a new tolerance level. One thing that's become apparent to me is people don't want to sacrifice. As architects, we should say that energy conservation is not a sacrifice. It's a new way of thinking. A new tolerance level that's needed by everyone to make this happen. Here in the Northwest, most of our houses aren't air-conditioned. Why not have them breathe and bring in the clean air we have? It's a more natural approach.

Have you seen progress made in related professions like building development and real estate?

Since 2007 I've become more involved with the National Association of Industrial Office Parks (NAIOP), which is basically commercial developers. I'm co-chairing a sustainable development committee for them. The commercial developers of the world are becoming more and more aware of the marketability of doing energy responsible projects, especially in the Northwest because we're not typically in the mode of just flipping buildings. We have a lot of owner-occupied buildings. It's nice. We still have to talk about the business case, but more people are realizing there's a competitive advantage to operating a high-efficiency building and being able to say that to your clients and tenants.

One of our first naturally ventilated buildings was a credit union. They said after a year of occupancy, the amount of sick leave their staff took and staff retention really changed. People felt better and they wanted to stay.

Research Based Design

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:42:41 +0000

Written by Naomi Cole, Konstrukt, Inc. for BetterBricks

The Value of Research

A transformation began at SRG Partnership in 1999 when Principal Architect, Kent Duffy, began collaborating with the University of Oregon's Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory (ESBL) while designing the University's Lillis Business Complex for the Lundquist College of Business.

Little did he know that this relationship would forever change his and his firm's approach to design and professional practice. The value of ESBL's research-based approach became clear through tested scale models and the effectiveness of its director, G.Z. Charlie Brown, to demonstrate a principle. How could a designer argue with daylighting potential in the Northwest when Brown opened the blinds and turned off the lights to show sufficient footcandle measurements using a table top light meter? Brown brings a fully equipped research lab, experienced professional staff, extensive research data and a long history of project experience to prove the effectiveness of particular design innovations.

"When we saw what Charlie and the Lab could do, it gave us the information to make informed descisions, not guesses," - Kent Duffy, SRG Partnership

"When we saw what Charlie and the Lab could do, it gave us the information to make informed decisions, not guesses," says Duffy. On the Lillis project SRG, applied a variety of passive strategies that they had used intuitively in other projects, but the application at Lillis was very different. This time the design was backed up by tested research and analyses done by the Lab.

For Duffy and others at SRG, including Design Principal Jon Schleuning and Managing Principal Dennis Cusack, this ability to distinguish between perceptions and reality was increasingly valuable to their design process. ESBL's support has allowed them to optimize building performance with concepts specific to building type and location.

Over the last ten years the relationship between SRG and ESBL has gradually transformed the approaches of the firm's design leaders, the management and business model for a multi-office practice, and related impacts to the rapidly evolving profession of architecture.

Transformation of the Designers

As individuals at SRG began to understand the value of ESBL analysis to verify design performance through tested models, the Lab's research took on increasing importance in their design routine. Once Lillis was built, SRG wanted their next project to perform at an even higher level. "Understanding performance changed the value system of how we judge buildings and perceive things," says Schleuning.

The most defining transformation for both design principals is that environmental responsiveness has become form generating. From project outset, they now systematically work through the analysis of daylight or natural ventilation to ensure an approach really works and is properly integrated into a concept to inform spatial and material qualities. Instead of presuming what a building will look like and then figuring out how to make it work, Duffy and Schleuning now explore what works passively and use that information to give form to a structure. As Duffy says, "What you build reflects what you believe." They consider local environmental characteristics before even developing a design concept. And for both architects, that reversal in process has been the greatest transformation.

A new SRG building for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife exemplifies this transformational approach. While still negotiating the contract, and prior to any design workshops, Schleuning scheduled a meeting with Brown and mechanical engineer Paul Schwer of PAE Consulting Engineers to discuss key questions to ask during programming. He knew that effective programming would inform occupants' behavior in the space and that collocation of similar functions would help optimize the resource demands of different space types. Energy demands and comfort zones were accounted for before building diagrams were ever conceived. The first thing he asked the owner-where is the nearest weather station?

Brown has worked with many architects over his long career and has found a unique give and take with Duffy and Schleuning because they take his participation as a university-based researcher very seriously. This is partly because the two principals are highly collaborative with one another and openly critical when appropriate. They have found a similar relationship with Brown. At a recent work session at ESBL, Duffy and Brown were exploring optimum configurations for a daylit classroom. When Duffy suggested what he personally knew was an unusual, and potentially unreasonable, configuration, Brown beamed in response and said, "I knew eventually you'd start listening to me."

Each design is an evolution of the one before it and SRG and ESBL are exploring new ways to shape the reflectors and deliver light to a room while also providing shade in special situations

This kind of give and take between Brown, Duffy and Schleuning is unique in the design practice because it is unlike that of architect and client or architect and consultant. As an independent, academic research institute, supported in part by BetterBricks since 2002, ESBL ensures that design explorations are idea-driven, as well as service-driven in response to a client. This facilitates a two-way free exchange of ideas and challenges in both directions.

Transformation of the Firm

Though the Lab collaboration began as a successful dynamic primarily involving Duffy and Schleuning, under Cusack's leadership this approach to performance and research-based design now permeates the firm. Across SRG, attitudes are changing. A new sense of inquiry ensures that designers first think about environmental performance and use lessons from previous innovations, while new iterations improve on lessons learned from previous models. It even creates a healthy competition among designers who want their own projects to achieve the best performance results and use the least energy. "The end result," observes Brown, "is exemplary buildings that leverage the resources of their context, amplify the productivity and health of their occupants and demonstrate high levels of performance."

One example of this evolution is the daylit classroom concept first used at Mount Angel Abbey. Over the years, Brown and his collaborators had developed a model of a large central skylight situated above reflectors to diffuse light throughout a room. He finally found the right application opportunity with the SRG team and the Mount Angel project. The project has now found much success along with a few challenges. SRG's enthusiasm for the design and the lessons learned from the first installation has encouraged them to keep refining the concept, which has since been used in other SRG projects like the da Vinci Middle School, Chemeketa Community College, and Spokane Falls Community College. Each design is an evolution of the one before it and SRG and ESBL are exploring new ways to shape the reflectors and deliver light to a room while also providing shade in special situations.

Architecture schools have traditionally taught the descipline through structure and form, and designers are now being asked to understand architecture through environmental resources like light and air, which require engineering techniques to be understood at a higher level.

Through over 30 collaborative projects with ESBL the SRG staff has transformed, much like Duffy, Schleuning, and Cusack, to recognize the value of research analysis and modeling of a design providing the direct link to better building performance. The proliferation of SRG and ESBL partner projects means that there are now 24-30 people within SRG who can readily communicate with Brown and his team about integrated design to produce higher levels of building performance. This also provides ESBL an opportunity to try new things outside of the lab. The relationship goes both ways.

SRG has now proven, internally, that certain design strategies will be givens for their projects, and each new project starts at a higher level, with a smaller learning curve because previous buildings have proven the value of a particular strategy. Teams now know to ask for climate data at the very beginning of a project. The level of insulation on the exterior of a building no longer requires proof on each project. There is no debate about whether to daylight a space, only the question of how. Lessons learned from one project become standard for the next. At Mount Angel, the ceiling fans were all wired on the same circuit so the retroactively installed monitors could not isolate fan energy use for a particular room. SRG now asks electrical engineers to place fans on individual circuits for more effective monitoring. Because infiltration was a challenge at Mount Angel, SRG now requires blower door tests for all their new projects.

Out of all these lessons learned, and a desire for greater efficiency, SRG has developed a matrix to help guide new projects through the analytic process that they have learned from Brown. It takes a quantitative approach to break energy demand into lighting, fan power, and plug loads, for example, and a qualitative approach to consider comfort and visibility as an example of occupant satisfaction. This comprehensive analysis helps to drive down energy demand before a project even hits the drawing board and is just one approach to help further integrate energy analysis in a consistent manner across projects. "We're very enthusiastic about it," says Schleuning, "But it's harder than we ever thought."

This is one of many related initiatives within the firm that were inspired by the relationship with the Lab. The project level work was the catalyst, and from that Cusack was challenged to standardize the quality of analysis and performance of every new SRG project across multiple offices. A 2007 Strategic Plan for Integrated High Performance Buildings helped institutionalize this approach and formalize related intentions for 100 percent LEED Accreditation of Principals and 85 percent of design staff, as well as emerging partnerships with other leading thinkers and a new accounting model to assess the value of an existing building or site. Cusack creates the environment across the firm to share lessons learned and stimulate new initiatives so that designers like Duffy and Schleuning can remain project-focused and build the next-generation high performance building.

Transformation of the Profession

From the application of this research-based approach in SRG's own practice and firm, Cusack observes a huge challenge for the architecture profession-an increasing awareness of performance and resource consumption requires that designers essentially relearn professional practice. Architecture schools have traditionally taught the discipline through structure and form, and designers are now being asked to understand architecture through environmental resources like light and air, which require engineering techniques to be understood at a higher level.

"We may understand the intuitive aspects, like the fact that it's easier to heat water than air, but what do we do about it?" asks Schleuning. ESBL helps bridge this knowledge gap with practical, hands-on application and models that connect form to performance and allow designers to optimize the two. Duffy explains that passive systems require more engineering because they must respond to small nuances to achieve performance targets. "It takes the most refined level of engineering imaginable to get a building to breathe and stay warm without turning on fans or boilers," he says.

Schleuning adds that it is not only the buildings, but also the behavior of their occupants, that must change. He characterizes Brown as a behavioralist because he considers the power of people to impact building energy use. If occupants fail to open the blinds in the morning to let in sunlight, then the electric lights become the default and an entire daylighting scheme has no impact. Similarly, Schleuning is adamant that designers must learn not to design for extremes, which he refers to as the "5 percent solution," where an entire HVAC system is oversized to respond to five days of above average weather annually, rather than letting occupants respond to the variation through clothing, open windows, or individual fans.

While this increasing awareness challenges architects, it can be even more challenging for building owners who are not trained to think about performance of their facilities. And because some design decisions require new flexibility to allow greater comfort ranges or different operating routines, the significance of conveying these opportunities to clients cannot be underestimated. By working with decision makers at all levels, SRG may explain opportunities in a different way to administrators, facilities managers, and the users because each interest group brings a different set of priorities that directly affect building performance. While many of these client groups are still evolving in their thinking about energy demand and occupant behavior in their buildings, SRG brings trust and added value with a portfolio of research analysis and tested building performance.

Over their careers, Duffy, Schleuning, and Cusack have seen trends come and go. In this era of increasing awareness of resource consumption and the impact of buildings worldwide, they feel a burden and responsibility to see that the evolving responsiveness to climate assets and building performance has endurance. "We're back in a phase when we're trying to have an impact, and if we can cement values that have lasting merit, then we are in fact successful and of value," says Schleuning. "We're in a position now to change the world."

The Impact of Innovation

The implications of this innovation process are not underestimated by SRG. It is very serious work. "When you're doing innovation, if it doesn't work, then it jeopardizes a whole series of very, very positive acts that other people are doing," explains Schleuning. If, in fact, the daylighting approach at Mount Angel had not worked, then all its visitors and observers would have spread the word that this particular approach to a daylit classroom was a bad idea. Fortunately, it did work. There is an awareness within the firm that each act of innovation creates a precedent, making the testing and modeling process during design even more important.

Yet Duffy looks forward to a future of architectural practice with continued experimentation and exploration of the possibilities that he has valued so greatly in his relationship with ESBL.

Considering this and the seriousness of their experimentation, SRG felt that the missing piece of their research was a comprehensive approach to monitoring the performance of their buildings. They were concerned about making unsubstantiated claims and also wanted to reciprocate the benefits they received from ESBL. At Cusack's suggestion, SRG is sponsoring a two-year research fellowship at Brown's lab for a position fully dedicated to monitoring, testing, and verifying building performance.

Beyond the lab position, Duffy, Schleuning, and others in their office are committed to spreading their approach to collaboration and lessons learned throughout the design community. With the assistance of BetterBricks, the commercial building initiative of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, they have worked to expand and share ESBL's lessons learned and expertise. For a project in Montana that includes designers from SRG's Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco offices, Brown was recruited as the lead design researcher, but the workshops brought together all the academic labs that are part of the BetterBricks Integrated Design Lab Network to help others embrace this kind of collaboration.

While this has been largely personal for SRG and its design leaders, they recognize that the relationship with ESBL must have a legacy and are looking to expand ESBL's reach to partner with similar labs around the country and expand the network around the world. Duffy, Schleuning, and Cusack hope to see a similar network of research labs pop up in Frankfurt, Paris, and Sydney to support local architects.

A Conversation with Guy Battle - July, 2009

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:40:23 +0000

Guy Battle is one of the founding partners of Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers, a multi-disciplinary practice that specializes in the design and delivery of sustainable solutions for the built environment. Guy has worked on a wide range of international projects and is credited with developing an innovative approach to sustainable environmental master planning. Brian Libby, blog author and BetterBricks contributor, had a chance to catch up with Guy before a lecture in Portland, Oregon.

Brian Libby: When you were visiting Portland in 2005, you said you thought within five to ten years the U.S. would switch positions with Europe in leading sustainable design and building. So today, is that the case?

Guy Battle: The thing about America is when it gets its act together and gets into gear, there's not many things that can stop this sort of mad, massive machine. Today I was doing reviews of projects, and I think that even within the past four years since I talked to you last, after just looking at these projects today, [there have been] massive changes.

Yesterday I was reviewing the Oregon Sustainability Center design. There is no way that building would have been built or even discussed four years ago. Dennis Wilde and his team are really pushing it. These guys have really been researching what's been happening in Europe. In terms of a mental switch, it's massively important. It's a recognition that, 'We Americans are not leading in this area.' Which is quite hard for Americans. To recognize that someone else has been leading the charge on this has been really important.

The thing I like most in the process is the early interaction with the architects - where you start with a piece of white paper, and yet it's always really scary.

Libby: Kind of like the auto industry.

Battle: Yes, all of this comes together. We have a saying in England: You can be waiting for a bus, and then the next time you look up five buses come along at the same time. It's that sort of thing. Barack Obama's been elected, and there's been a stimulus package. The recession has been good for this, I believe, because it means people have got time to think. The US Green Building Council, and the Cascadia Chapter particularly, have been pushing this Living Building Challenge, which I think is just fantastic.

The Living Building Challenge, the objectives they've encompassed are up there with what Europe and the UK, which I think is leading it still. It's saying, "We have to be doing it." Within the UK, we've got to achieve zero carbon buildup and zero energy by 2020. The challenges here in the US are for 2030. So you're somewhat behind.

But having said that, the Sustainability Center project is really up there with the best that I've been working on. I was really impressed by the rigor of the analysis and the architecture that was coming out was beginning to test the accepted norms.

Libby: How do you see that as an example of America's progress in sustainability? Or do you see it more as particular regions of the country?

Battle: I think there's no doubt about it that North America, has developed centers of excellence. The great morass is still out there wondering what or how to do it. But there are some great successes out there. That's been a massive change. We didn't have those same centers of excellence out there four years ago. I could sense that they were coming.

The recession gives us an enormous opportunity to just take some time out and rethink.

The great danger, though, especially here, is this whole issue of greenwash- now you can't move without engineers and architects saying they do sustainable design. When you get down into it, a lot of them are only saying it. That's a challenge, especially with clients. They need to sift through architects and engineers who can still deliver and are not just saying they can. But at least everyone is talking about climate change.

Libby: Where are you seeing these centers of excellence?

Battle: There's firms, and there's areas. I've been really impressed over these couple of days with the attitude in the Northwest. There seems to be much more openness. Now, admittedly the climate is kinder. But the opportunities are really being explored. We've had some great conversations about daylighting and natural ventilation. Natural ventilation four or five years ago, people were saying, "No way." Now they're even talking about it for laboratories, which is fantastic.

Libby: How has the integrated design process changed how you and other team members work together?

Battle: Since I set up the practice with Chris McCarthy, we've always recognized having as many disciplines under one roof as possible. It is really the only way to generate this. Because you've got to get everyone's input, working together, all with a common attitude, a common culture of excellence and sustainability.

Libby: How do the US and UK systems contribute to that?

Battle: It's easier in the UK because while there are specialists, there tends to be less specialization. By that I mean, you take an engineering practice and there are quite a few services engineers and MEP engineers who are multidisciplinary. They're all together. And sustainability has always existed within those practices. It hasn't been a specialist consultancy.

In this country, it's that much harder because the industry appears to be so fragmented. There's this new group of people who have come up over the past seven or eight years that are called sustainability consultants, mostly for facilitating LEED I'm told. One of the problems with those individuals is that they are quite often just people who have earned the LEED qualification. They've had no real experience of delivering it. But put that aside for a moment. The challenge then over here is that you have so many different specialties.

The role of the conductor, the architect, is to get everyone playing to the same piece of music and then to actually all go in the same direction. It really is so much harder in this country than it has been in the UK. In the UK you need the architect, you need the structural engineer, the MEP engineer, and the cost consultant. And really that's all you need. Everyone has enough information around their subjects to do what they need. But here we need at least double that, it seems. You need a specialist on ecology, acoustics, daylight, energy use.

Libby: What about the responsibility for overseeing materials?

Battle: In the UK the materials are handled quite often by a combination of architect and structural engineer and services engineer who tend to be the LEED equivalent. Because we have BREEAM [British English Environmental Assessment Method],it's been the service engineers who have done BREEAM. So we've had to learn all about sustainable tools. So we bring that to the table.

The other thing I think we've seen a big change in is just the analysis tools that are now available. 15 years ago the tools by comparison to now were clunky. Clunky CFD, clunky thermo analysis. Yes, we had them, but they weren't particularly fine tuned. Now we're finding that there are analysis tools that allow for quicker, smarter assessment of projects. And that has also raised the ability of teams to deliver on this vision.

Libby: Are there certain projects either recently or in your career that represent breakthroughs like this, or have felt like important stepping stones?

Battle: Yes. I guess the first was one I did personally before I set up the office, eighteen years ago when I was at Arup. We did a project called Tomigaya with [architect] Richard Rogers. It's basically a building that was designed to be a zero-energy building. It was designed all around the wind: the whole shape, form. That made me really explore the link between architecture and the environment. I saw there was a real opportunity within the discipline of architecture to create a new architectural form that is much more responsive to the environment.

And we're seeing that now. On the Oregon Sustainability Center there was some artistic interpretation of the [roof] teardrop. They were really beginning to get it with the roof and the sun. The rest of it was still lacking some rigor, but the top of the tower was really beginning to respond to the sun-path diagram.

Libby: How do you see today's projects fitting into a larger sustainable design trend?

Battle: I think we're in just the beginning… where we'll look back in five years' time and realize that we're in the middle of a new architectural philosophy, architectural movement, which is environmental architecture, modern, whatever you want to call it. I've heard lots of definitions of it. Some call it a formless architecture, architecture that responds to environment.

Libby: It reminds of me of the phrase that Le Corbusier coined: "machines for living".

Battle: Yeah. Machines for living is a kind of interesting term, isn't it? We look back and see it was really kind of sterile, wasn't it? You had this light bulb hanging in the middle of the space and this double skin. It was a celebration of the technology without realizing that people are fundamental to everything. Now there's an understanding that buildings have to create an environment for people to live in. I'm seeing that sort of movement.

Tomigaya 18 years ago was just the start of that. And then after setting up the practice [Battle McCarthy], the first building we did was called the St. Johns Innovation Centre. It was the first modern architecture in Europe to have wind towers for ventilation. It was a very simple stack effect, daylight, external shading-really basic. The architecture doesn't make you go, "Wow." It's not like a Morphosis building. But it's really honest.

Libby: It's interesting that your career was influenced by doing an ahead-of-its-time green building with Richard Rogers, because some of his most famous works like the Pompidou Center and Lloyd's of London have been described as having the insides of the building on the outside, and vice versa. It made the structure and mechanics of the building part of its identity; just as sustainable building does today.

Battle: You're absolutely right. The thing is Rogers was very experimental with structure. He was working very closely with Peter Rice at that time, and it was all about form following function. And the structure was used to express it. Now we're through that period where structure is expressed. We're expressing the environment, which is much more subtle.

I guess along the way another building that was pretty seminal for us was the University of Rwanda with Ralph Johnson (of Perkins + Will). I did a lot of work with Ralph. We did the L.A. Courthouse. [An atrium with a soaring, curved solar wall optimizes daylight, provides natural ventilation and captures energy through high-tech cells imbedded in the glass.] That was all about the wind and the sun. You had to respond to the sun to keep it out, but the form really was designed to capture the wind. It's a large site and it also integrated the landscape. So that was also an important project.

Libby: How similar or different are some of these architects you've worked with like Rogers, Perkins + Will, Norman Foster or Daniel Libeskind? Is it a more similar process from project to project and architect to architect than people realize, or is it a matter of learning new dance steps every time?

Battle: Oh no, it's definitely learning to dance. Compare Rogers to Foster. There's a real contrast. Foster is really sort of, like, the product. He somehow really encapsulates things. Rogers is very left of center, and social. He's all about collaboration and discussion. You go to workshops and there's a process of evolution. Foster's projects are somehow more refined. You're working on a much tighter box in terms of your input. You have to learn to work with these guys, and you learn what pushes their buttons, what sets them going, how to seduce them. Because at the end of the day the engineer is in very basic terms…I often call myself a prostitute, inasmuch that it's not my building. I'm not the architect. At the end of the day, society celebrates the architect and architecture. But you need to learn to influence these guys, and you have to understand that the language is subtly different with each one, and push them certain directions, certain ways. A good engineer learns very quickly that you've got to sort of step back and move forward again with the right language and push, emotion and encouragement, through communication, through sketching, whatever the language might be.

Libby: In almost any field as one advances into a leadership role there is the personal risk of getting away from the work one enjoys-going to lots of meetings, always traveling, and so on. What is your skill set and what do you like the most about your job, and are you still able to do it?

Battle: I guess I'm a designer first and foremost. The thing I like most in the process is the early interaction with the architects-where you start with a piece of white paper, and yet it's always really scary. You've got the brief, you've got the client saying, 'We want this.' Where the hell are we gonna start? It's kind of daunting. And every now and again there are blocks, you get literally designer blocks, where you just can't think. You can't break through. You're looking for that idea. You always come up with something, but it's that process of working with the other people on the design team, where we're sparking off each other-that sort of thing. I really enjoy that bit.

Meetings are a fundamental part of that, and the travel I can take or leave. But the trouble is I really enjoy going to different climates. If I were working in England all the time I'd get bored. I mean, it's cold in the summer, warm in the winter. You come over to New York, the South and the Northwest and there are different kinds of climate extremes. We've done work in some extreme places. We just finished up a new tower where it gets down to minus 27 degrees Centrigrade. It's a really cold place. That's an extreme. I love going to these different places and working with an architect who's willing to listen and see what it's going to grow out of it. Because it's always different. This new movement of architecture needs to be regional and about the place and climate.

Libby: You mentioned the economic downturn being good for green building because it necessitates more innovation and long-term thinking about building performance. But looking at Battle McCarthy's website, in the 'highrise' category particularly, a lot of projects are listed as being in the conceptual stage. How has the firm and its portfolio going forward been affected by the worldwide economic downturn?

Battle: Well, inevitably the economy has put some projects on hold. But having said that I think that the recession gives us an enormous opportunity to just take some time out and rethink. I think because there was such a boom over the past several years leading up to this time last year, everyone just sort of ran with it, and no one really spent the time to think about it. Now you've got that space, an enforced sabbatical. It's time to think and learn and bring those ideas to the table.

Libby: Battle McCarthy is identified as a sustainable firm. How does that help marketing for you?

Battle: Everyone is doing sustainability these days. It was much easier five years ago. Let's just take London, which is my home market. When we kicked off sixteen years ago, we were one of only about two or three firms doing it. Most of the major engineering firms in the early 1990s couldn't even spell the word sustainability, let alone know what it was all about. Five years ago the whole market just switched. Developers were demanding it. And now every single practice, without fail, has a sustainability section or sells it in some fashion. That knowledge used to be a sort of winning card. Now we can't win on that alone. We can win on delivery, because we've got so much more track record. But that doesn't always play out, so we have to look for new ways and new approaches.

I guess what we sell now is that interactive approach with the architects. It's that knowledge, a base of knowledge, saying that 'If you build a building with us, you'll be able to do a better building than if you work with this other practice. Even though they'll bring the sustainability, it's because of our knowledge and creativity within the practice that you'll end up doing better. It's about service.

Libby: What projects or places today have you excited?

Battle: I think there's actually some really interesting work happening out in the Middle East at the moment. With HOK we're doing some work for King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia. And then you've got this Masdar [development in Abu Dhabi, 2003-2007, the headquarters will be the world's first large-scale, mixed-use "positive energy" building, producing more energy than it consumes.]. We're sort of involved in Masdar, but on the periphery, not on design. We're doing carbon management. But Foster's done this master plan for Masdar. And then Smith and Geary are doing a project there. Foster's also doing the headquarters.

Libby: Where do you see the most opportunity?

Battle: The challenge of climate change is not so much what's happening in countries like America and those across Europe. The amount that we build is relatively small. We have a turnover of new buildings at about two percent, three percent of the stock every year. But if you move over to the Middle East, or to Southeast Asia, China or other places, it's another story. If there's a place where we need this step change, I think it will be places like the Middle East and China. And it will be Africa. Africa's not economically there yet. But that's where we're going to see massive growth in people and populations and resulting demand for shelter and housing and commercial projects.

Podcasts

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:21:26 +0000

Moving toward Zero-Net Energy Buildings
In this AIA podcast, learn how architects in California are addressing environmental concerns through support of net-zero energy buildings and green legislation.

Delivery Process

admin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:48:36 +0000

AIA Integrated Project Delivery Guide
This guide provides information and guidance on principles and techniques and explains how to utilize IDP methodologies in design and construction. The approach integrates people, systems and practices into a process that collaboratively harnesses the talents of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction.

Integrated Design Steps for Designers
Click here for a summary of key steps for the design team for the Integrated Design process. The steps are organized as a checklist for each of the traditional phases of design.

The Canadian Integrated Design Process
Developed from experience gained from a small Canadian demonstration program for high-performance buildings, the C2000 program. The C-2000 process is now called the Integrated Design Process (IDP), and focuses on providing advice on the design process at the very early stage of design.

High Performance Building Design Charrette and Sample Agenda
How-to-guide on organizing and running a design charrette. Helps define what it is, when it should occur, who should participate, role of the owner, and desired outcomes. Includes a sample charrette agenda.

Guide to the Design and Construction of High Performance Hospitals
Describes why and how to use "Integrated Design" as a technique and process essential to helping achieve high performance facilities on time, within budget and with less risk.

Additional D&C Partners & Resources

admin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:45:16 +0000

NEEA's BetterBricks coordinates with local, regional and national partners who offer additional tools and resources that can help you.

AIA's Integrated Practices | Integrated Project Delivery
Integrated Practices | Integrated Project Delivery leverages early contributions of knowledge and expertise through the utilization of new technologies, allowing all team members to better realize their highest potentials while expanding the value they provide throughout the project life cycle.

AIA's 50to50
50to50 is a how-to resource intended to assist architects and the construction industry in moving toward the AIA's public goal of a minimum 50 percent reduction of fossil fuel consumption in buildings by 2010 and carbon neutrality by 2030. Note that this is a 7 MB file.

AIA's Integrated Project Delivery Guide
This Integrated Project Delivery Guide developed by the AIA is offered as a tool to assist owners, designers and builders to move toward integrated models and improved design, construction and operations processes. The goal of the Guide is to identify the characteristics of IPD and to provide specific information and guidance on how to utilize IPD methods to achieve enhanced design, construction and operation.

American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and AC Engineers's (ASHRAE) High Performance Buildings Magazine
ASHRAE publishes a new quarterly magazine called High Performing Buildings distributed to building owners, facility managers, architects, contractors and engineers. It is designed to help decision makers in the building community learn about the benefits of innovative technologies and energy-efficient design and operation. Filled with case studies of exemplary buildings, developed through the support of leading practitioners in the sustainability movement. High Performing Buildings is available in digital form at no cost.

Architecture 2030
Architect Ed Mazria and Architecture 2030 issued 2030 Challenge in response to the global-warming crisis. 2030's mission is to rapidly transform the US and global building sector from the major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions to a central part of the solution to the global-warming crisis. Their goal is to achieve a dramatic reduction in the global-warming-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the building sector by changing the way buildings and developments are planned, designed and constructed. A brief overview of the 2030 Challenge is available to download and distribute HERE.

Cascadia Region Green Building Council
The Cascadia Region Green Building Council is one of three original chapters of the U.S. Green Building Council. Incorporated in Oregon in December 1999, the chapter covers Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska, but also includes members from Idaho and Montana. Cascadia delivers programs and training and developed and promotes Living Buildings.

Early Identification of Building Construction Projects - Early ID
Early ID, a program sponsored by the Bonneville Power Administration, helps you maximize energy efficiency in your new commercial building. Consider energy efficiency in the concept design phase to develop cost-effective strategies and maximize benefits from participating utility programs and reduce the cost of your building through integrated design, utility incentives and tax credits.

Energy Smart Design™ - Office (ESD Office)
Prescriptive Packages are structured to reduce the incremental cost of a package of measures, without requiring building energy performance modeling. This package of energy-efficient measures, when installed according to ESD Office specifications, may be eligible for incentives from your utility: high efficiency cooling systems; high performance windows; enhanced economizer; integrated design of HVAC system, and high performance lighting and lighting controls.

ENERGY STAR'S Building Design Guidance
These guidelines are a strategic management approach, not a technical reference, to incorporate energy performance in the building design process. It is a set of suggested actions for design professionals and building owners to establish and achieve energy goals. These guidelines encourage best practices for energy design as part of the overall design process, and can help translate design intent to top energy performing buildings.

Energy Efficiency Pilot Program for Small Commercial Market
A new energy efficiency pilot program for owners who construct office, school or retail buildings 10,000 to 70,000 sq. ft. is now available through the Energy Trust of Oregon and Earth Advantage Institute. Eligible new construction or major renovation projects can receive design assistance and cash incentives from Energy Trust, and can achieve certification as a green building for implementing a wide range of sustainable features developed by Earth Advantage institute.

International Living Building Institute
The International Living Building Institute is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the creation of a truly sustainable built environment. The Institute’s mission is to encourage the creation of Living Buildings, Sites and Communities in countries around the world while inspiring, educating and motivating a global audience about the need for fundamental and transformative change.

The Living Building Challenge^SM is is a philosophy, advocacy tool and certification program that promotes the most advanced measurement of sustainability in the built environment possible today. It can be applied to development at all scales, from buildings - both new construction and renovation, to infrastructure, landscapes and neighborhoods. Living Building Challenge is comprised of seven performance areas: Site, Water, Energy, Health, Materials, Equity and Beauty.

New Building Institute (NBI)
NBI works with national, regional, state and utility groups to promote improved energy performance in commercial new construction. NBI manages projects involving building research, design guidelines and code activities to ensure all elements of this chain are available for use by energy efficiency programs throughout the US.

NBI's Getting to 50
A resource by the New Buildings Institute to help designers, architects, owners and contractors achieve their goals of truly high-performance buildings. Research by NBI indicates there are about 100 new commercial buildings whose energy efficiency features are 50 percent better than code.

Oregon Sustainability Center
As one of the highest performing commercial buildings in the world, the Oregon Sustainability Center will achieve triple net-zero performance in energy and water use and carbon emissions. It is designed to meet the world's most stringent green building criteria, the Cascadia Region Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge. The OSC will also serve a "living laboratory" to maximize experimental opportunities and provide an optimal setting for hand-on green training, research and growing Oregon's green economy.

Small Construction Pilot Program
A new pilot program is now available through Energy Trust of Oregon and Earth Advantage Institute for owners who construct office, school or retail buildings 10,000 to 70,000 square feet. Eligible new construction or major renovation projects can receive design assistance and cash incentives from Energy Trust for designing and constructing an energy-efficient building, and can achieve certification as a green building for implementing a wide range of sustainable features developed by Earth Advantage Institute.

US DOE Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative: Design & Evaluation
This USDOE initiative aims to achieve marketable net-zero energy commercial buildings by 2025. Net-zero energy buildings generate as much energy as they consume through efficiency technologies and on-site power generation.

US Green Building Council (USGBC)
USGBC is a non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings accessible to everyone within a generation. USGBC developed and implements the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ that encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.

The Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG)
WBDG is a gateway hosted by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) to up-to-date information on integrated 'Whole Building" design techniques and technologies. The goal of WBDG is to help users apply the integrated design method and the team approach to projects during the planning and programming phases.

Zero Energy Buildings Database
The Zero Energy Building Database features profiles of commercial buildings that produce as much energy as they use over the course of a year. Learn more about the types of zero energy buildings HERE. This database highlights projects from across the country and provides ideas that can be applied to any new building. The Zero Energy Buildings Database is part of the High Performance Buildings Database, which lists many additional projects. Visit the High Performance Buildings Database to discover more energy efficient building techniques.

Articles

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:50:12 +0000

An Interview with Ulf Meyer, Ingenhoven
Ulf Meyer is an accomplished architectural critic and author who has been published in major newspapers and architectural magazines both in Germany and abroad. He is the editor of ARCH+ journal and serves as the German correspondent for World Architecture. NEEA's BetterBricks caught up with Ulf during a recent visit to Portland to discuss the next wave of green design.

Performance-Based Design
The Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design and Construction strives to be the first of its kind - an urban mid-rise Living Building. The vision of the Bullitt Foundation and its director, Denis Hayes, is to develop a game-changing place that creates a ripple effect to change the way designers, cities and occupants think about their buildings.

Targeting 100! Envisioning the High Performance Hospital: Implications for a New, Low Energy, High Performance Prototype
This groundbreaking new research effort reveals how hospitals, which account for four percent of all energy consumed in the U.S., can achieve a 60 percent reduction in energy utility use by redesigning the way they use energy. The most salient outcome of this work is the definition of a process that brings together architectural, mechanical and central plant systems to deliver significant efficiencies. Download materials here:

Targeting 100! Executive Summary
Targeting 100! full report
Energy in Healthcare Fact Sheet
Targeting 100 Infographic

An Interview with Amanda Sturgeon, Perkins + Will
For more than a decade, Amanda Sturgeon has been a leader in the emerging sustainable building field. Working in both the private and public sectors through the course of her career, Sturgeon has been a leader helping convince clients and colleagues to embrace energy-efficient design. This is why Sturgeon received a BetterBricks Award for Architect in 2008.

Architect, author and educator, Peter Clegg, is a senior partner with the London based firm Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios. Peter visited the Northwest in late 2009 for the BetterBricks-sponsored Transformational Lecture series, where he caught up with BetterBricks to discuss the current challenges and opportunities within sustainable architecture.

An Interview with Norm Strong, Miller | Hull Partnership
In 2007 Norman Strong, managing partner of The Miller | Hull Partnership, a venerable Seattle architecture firm, received a BetterBricks Award in the Advocate category. In this interview, Strong shares his insights on the current state of the green building industry and how architects are continuing to progress energy efficiency.

Research Based Design
This article presents SRG Partnership's evolution in embracing a research based design approach through a collaborative relationship with the University of Oregon's Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory. This partnership has transformed the approaches of the firm's design leaders, the management and business model for a multi-office practice, and related impacts to the rapidly evolving profession of architecture.

Shining a (Natural) Light on Green Schools
This article in Green Inc., a New York Times energy and environment blog, discusses the unique collaboration between of the University of Oregon's Energy Studies in Buildings Lab (ESBL) and Da Vinci Art Middle School in Portland, Ore. Architecture firm SRG Partnership worked ESBL to design the green prototype classroom, which uses natural dayligting, passive heating and cooling systems, solar roof tile and other green features that yeild a 70 percent efficiency improvement over Oregon building code requirements.

A Conversation with Guy Battle - July, 2009
Guy Battle is one of the founding partners of Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers, a multi-disciplinary practice that specializes in the design and delivery of sustainable solutions for the built environment. Guy has worked on a wide range of international projects and is credited with developing an innovative approach to sustainable environmental master planning. Brian Libby, blog author and BetterBricks contributor, had a chance to catch up with Guy before a lecture in Portland, Oregon.

An Interview with Patrick Bellew, Founder of Atelier Ten
Patrick Bellew is the founding director of Atelier Ten and a Chartered Building Services Engineer with more than twenty years' experience in the design of high performance buildings and their systems. His success in integrated innovative technologies with noteworthy architecture has been acknowledged by the Royal Institute of British Architects, who've made him an Honorary Fellow, one of only three in his field. BetterBricks had the privilege to catch up with Patrick before a presentation to conduct the following interview.

An Interview with Peter Rumsey
BetterBricks recently caught up with owner and managing principal of Rumsey Engineers, Peter Rumsey. Peter has worked in engineering and energy consulting since the mid 1980s, and is widely recognized as global player in energy efficiency and a leader in sustainable building design.

Getting to Net Zero
Many designers, engineers and developers are pushing the envelope by designing and building carbon neutral and net zero buildings. What is a net zero energy building (NZEB)? Paul Schwer, P.E. LEED AP has written an article, found on the BetterBricks website, called "Carbon Neutral and Net Zero Buildings-How Soon Can We Get There?" explaining the importance and describing NZEB.

Daylight Dialect - Architectural Lighting, March 2008
Daylighting is a common 'high performance building' strategy and is an essential element of integrated design. However, even the experts have a hard time explaining what a well daylit space is. This makes it challenging for integrated teams to have a meaningful conversation about daylight in buildings and even more challenging to design daylit spaces. This article by Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, Director of the Integrated Design Lab in Boise, appeared in Architectural Lighting. It outlines the problem and proposes important definitions to develop a pathway toward a common daylighting language, or daylighting dialect.

Integrated Lighting - Architectural Lighting, April 2008
Integrating daylighting and electric lighting is an important part of full building integrated design-some would say it is the most important part. However, it is not without its challenges. This paper outlines the concept of holistic lighting design comprised by both daylighting and electric lighting sources. It presents some of the road blocks to holistic lighting design and highlights several important aspects for designing the lit environment.

Mount Angel Integrated Design Roundtable Discussion - Part I
Hear from the principal project team members responsible for the design of the new theology building. Through an extensive, collaborative process that searched for synergies between the elements of climate, use patterns, smaller loads and corresponding systems, the team was able to achieve a high performance building expected to save 62percent more energy than the code. This was all achieved at a lower cost.

Mount Angel Integrated Design Roundtable Discussion - Part II
Part II, focused on daylighting, continues the roundtable discussion about integrated design, among principal project team members responsible for design of the Annunciation New Center for Theological Studies graduate theology building at Mount Angel Abbey.

Mount Angel Integrated Design Roundtable Discussion - Part III
Part III of the Mount Angel integrated design roundtable discussion focuses on building envelope design challenges.

Energy Performance of LEED® for New Construction Buildings
New Buildings Institute has just released the broadest study to-date of measured energy performance of LEED buildings. The study gathered whole building energy data from 121 LEED New Construction buildings across the country that had been occupied for at least one year.

Meeting the 2030 Challenge with Integrated Design
How to meet the 2030 Challenge with a new way of thinking about design: searching for synergies.

Lillis Business Complex, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR - A Five Year Review
What started as a simple remodel of the University of Oregon's existing business school grew into the new Lillis Business Complex - a LEED certified, four-story, 140,000 square-foot building that demonstrates responsible business through sustainable design. Completed in December, 2003, the Lillis Business Complex is a focal point for not only the business school, but the University for its green design and prominent presence on campus. In this article, Kent Duffy, Principal at SRG Partnership, Inc. assesses the building's performance and provides a snapshot of the integrated strategies that contribute to energy efficiency.

Green Revisited
The 2006 study shows essentially the same results as 2004: there is no significant difference in average costs for green buildings as compared to non-green buildings.

Eco-Charrette
Explains the history of this design strategy and how it can be applied.

Design Approach

admin — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:59:23 +0000

Integrating Energy Engineering & Performance Modeling into the Design Process
This PDF provides a recommended scope of energy engineering and performance modeling services to support the development of very energy efficient, high performance buildings. This energy engineer/modeler will enhance the design team's understanding of project opportunities and constraints, challenge the design team to examine key questions, act as an advocate and serve as a design team resource to improve a building's energy performance throughout each design step.

ReThinking Design
At the heart of the process from programming through schematic design is the search for synergies, a highly iterative, open ended analysis of all of the major components and options.

Energy Design Resources Online Energy Analysis Tool
EDR Charette is an online tool that allows you to quickly investigate the energy impacts of various design scenarios on a typical building, and then review the analysis graphically in an easy to understand web-based format.

Understanding the Energy Modeling Process: Simulation Literacy 101
Demystifying energy modeling for design and facilities-planning professionals.

High-Performance Building
High-Performance Building gives architects a practical guide to excellent, sustainable design, showing how to analyze and evaluate the buildings "as built." Taking a hands-on view of sustainability, the author provides designers with specific benchmarks for high performance and energy efficiency. Utilizing the latest methods for analysis of climate responsive design.

MIT's Design Advisor
Architects and Building Designers can use computer modeling to explore options to improve indoor comfort and energy performance of conceptual building designs. But most simulation tools are too complicated for this purpose. Quick, visual comparisons are needed for early-stage design. The MIT Design Advisor is a tool which allows you to describe and simulate a building in less than five minutes. No technical experience or training is needed. An annual energy simulation can be run in less than a minute, and graphical results are immediately available for review. And it's free.

Mount Angel ID Roundtabl-Part I

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:09:04 +0000

Part I of III (see Part II and III)

The following article is the first part of a three part series drawn from a roundtable discussion that occurred in August 2007 about integrated design, among principal project team members responsible for design of the Annunciation New Center for Theological Studies graduate theology building at Mount Angel Abbey. The cross-disciplinary collaboration among project team members was a hallmark of this project, but specific areas of responsibility are indicated for each of the panel participants.

For details about the project, please see an overview brochure on the Annunciation New Center for Theological Studies developed by SRG Partnerships, Inc.

Father Michael Mee served as the Chair of the Building Committee and became involved several years before the actual design process started, as the Monastic Community and Building Committee composed their ideas about project aspirations. He also participated through the construction phase and occupancy, and knows all phases of the project well.

Kent Duffy, FAIA is a Principal of SRG Partnership, Inc., the project architect, and served as Principal in Charge and Project Designer.

Michael Hatten, P.E. is a Principal of SOLARC Architecture and Engineering and was the mechanical engineer and energy engineer for the project.

G.Z. "Charlie" Brown, FAIA, is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon and Director of the Energy Studies in Building Laboratory (ESBL). Under his leadership the ESBL designed, built, and monitored the performance of a full-size classroom prototype, in order to facilitate project team investigation and evaluation of daylighting, night ventilation of building mass, integration of mechanical and electrical systems, and to inform and define the passive systems approach that was incorporated into the project.

Kent Duffy ("KD"): We had a great conversation a week or so ago, among the four of us about topics to cover during this panel discussion. What came rushing back was what a great time we had doing this project. Everybody up here ended up doing something they'd never done before and counting on the other people at the table to make those innovations work, and although we're always trying to do something more than we've done before we trusted each other to do it together and we just had to keep working at it until we made it work.

Our office has worked with G.Z."Charlie" Brown on at least a dozen buildings and with Mike Hatten on LEED on at least a half a dozen buildings and we see this highly energy efficient integrated design approach getting implemented more and more. However, as much as you hear about LEED buildings, there are still not that many buildings that have done it yet. We're still learning a lot about what works best.

Father Michael ("FM"): From the Abbey's point of view, we began looking at the needs of the hilltop and a master plan long before this project. Many people helped us articulate what we were trying to do in putting a new building on this hilltop. I remember many conversations Kent and I had about our Alto Library and other buildings. One of the wonders I find in this building, even before we get to the energy efficiency, is the beautiful melding between the architectural styles of the hilltop and the library and the unity that's brought about by this building.

KD: There is a tendency on a client's part to think that if a building is passively heated, cooled and lit, it requires less engineering than what we'd call an active system building. In reality, it takes much more engineering and much more sophisticated engineering, because you don't have the benefit of powerful fans and chillers and cooling towers to make things work and achieve the comfort that people expect. You have to find ways of getting the air to move through the building and heat the mass of the building, in really remarkable ways, with the least amount of energy, which is, in my mind, a real test of engineering. Getting the air to flow through a building--it is exactly like water flowing downhill. Air will take the path of least resistance and if you put something in its way, it will go someplace else. You really have to think about creating that path of least resistance all the way through the entire building to get the air to move through.

The classrooms and boardroom are all one-story and have natural ventilation coming through the exterior walls of the building, venting up to the roof. They also have daylight apertures that bring light into the room. Another of the building portions is three stories high. When you enter the building, you're at the middle level of the office portion, with one level below and one above. And so one of the puzzles we had to solve was how to get the daylight into those spaces and ventilation air moving through the whole building to ventilate and passively cool those areas, too.

G.Z. "Charlie" Brown ("CB"): Many of the high performance features of this project had their origin in a high performance classroom prototype project that we did with BOORA Architects, and Mike Hatten was the mechanical engineer on that. Our goal there was to demonstrate that we could get high levels of performance at low cost. And in order to understand how classrooms use energy, we took a look at energy use in schools. For the heating load, one of the things that you can see is how outside air becomes a dominant force in energy use. It's because all of us breathe all the time and code requires that we introduce outside air. On the cooling side the same thing is true. Infiltration is a fairly important factor, lights are fairly important. It's interesting that people are also contributing quite a bit of heat to the building, which turns out to be a cooling load here, but you'll see later how we use it effectively to heat the building.

This is a little diagram that we've developed for BetterBricks to try to explain how things can work together. We begin by analyzing context, in our case, climate. Climate is often seen as a liability, but in our case, we see it as a resource. And you'll see how this building takes advantage of that.

During the programming stage, identify use patterns. The fact that this building is not used all year long is a significant factor influencing the design. In addition to the typical architectural goals, we also wanted to create small loads in the building-small need for heating, small need for lighting, and small need for cooling. Then we want to have systems that are sized to match the small loads. What we're doing is looking for synergies between those elements so that we can get one element to do multiple things, therefore increasing performance while reducing cost.

In the classroom prototype project we started trying to figure out, first of all in the use category, the criteria for lighting and for comfort. We did a fairly extensive look around Western Europe and Asia and the United States and found a lot of variation. Classroom lighting in Denmark is on the order of 20 foot-candles, while the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) standards are quite a bit higher. In the high performance classroom prototype, we were looking for something that is in the 20 to 40 foot-candle range. That criterion for lighting is much lower than what IES would have you think was necessary.

Thermal comfort is the same. ASHRAE now defines the hot end of the comfort zone as 80 degrees, if you have low relative humidity. We're fortunate here that often when we have high temperatures we also have low relative humidity. If you have air movement, you can easily increase the comfort zone by 3 or 4 degrees.

Michael Hatten ("MH"): I want to add to the discussion of loads. One place where the high performance classroom prototype and this project is a bit different is presence of the inlets and outlets in this naturally ventilated design. And that is not an insignificant thermal characteristic of the envelope. We used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) optimization, to size the inlets and outlets. We did not want to oversize them to keep conductive heat loss to a minimum.

Direct solar gain is another interesting load. The central design feature, a humungous skylight in the middle of this classroom, has a cooling load impact and, in fact, a heating load impact. So, this is another reason why we want to provide just as much light as we need and nothing more. We began with considering some of our options with louvers and even potentially insulated louvers, to control solar gain, and possibly provide a thermal benefit. This was one of our significant conversations around the high performance classroom prototype.

Obviously, we're designing classrooms and we're going to have a lot of people in these classrooms who will give off heat. Although, we can potentially use that heat, it still remains one of the major cooling loads.

Charlie mentioned ventilation on the heating side, it's also true on the cooling side-outside air ventilation is the significant load issue, with implications for how we might address these loads with systems concepts. One general principle is that you may want to seriously consider dealing with ventilation in a separate dedicated and special way, not necessarily as part of a set of mixed air dampers and some air handlers on the roof. That principle has been expressed in this design-each classroom has its own dedicated heat recovery ventilator. And then for the more complex and integrated spaces-the offices, the corridors-there is a building level heat recovery ventilator on the roof that provides ventilation air.

As we began to get some operating experience with this building-it happened to come on line right at the beginning of heating season-we quickly found out that our assumptions of how much outside air would move through this building functioning passively and how much was actually circulating were a little bit different.

To really figure out how air is going to move from inlets in the offices to outlets in those conference rooms-and this is really an integrated design challenge because there are code issues that you have to deal with, which comes back ultimately to the architectural designers-we need to have a way to transfer air from multiple rooms-transoms, use of hallways, open doors and ultimately out outlets. The complexity of the required airflow is significant and you really need to get the whole team sitting around the table and engaging in a series of discussions of how smart your air is going to be (or maybe not so smart).

Ventilation in the offices is done passively. So, the offices are actually not served by heat recovery ventilators, all the windows are operable, and all of the office occupants have control over a dedicated air inlet, as well. So they can use both windows and their inlets to bring in fresh air as needed.

KD: The whole issue of people having a level of expectation for what you can accomplish in a passive building is really an important one. I just finished the design for a building in Hawaii and a couple of things hit me in the process. One, is that Hawaii has a temperature that is essentially always in the comfort range. They get a little more humidity sometimes than we're used to-and it may get up to 85 sometimes, or down to 65-but typically it's a ten degree daily temperature range. I was stunned by two things. Most of the buildings are air conditioned and not only are they air conditioned, but people were wearing sweaters inside the buildings. There's a real need for people to realize that they can be comfortable in relatively benign conditions without a huge mechanical plant.

By Jeff Cole, Konstrukt, Inc. for NEEA's BetterBricks.

Photos of Mount Angel building are credited to Lara Swimmer Photography. Photos of roundtable discussion are creditied to Jeff Cole, Konstrukt, Inc.

Download this press release on this project

Patrick Bellew Interview

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:14:53 +0000

Download a PDF of this interview

Founding director of Atelier Ten, Patrick Bellew is a Chartered Building Services Engineer with more than twenty years' experience in the design of high performance buildings and their systems. His success in integrating innovative technologies with noteworthy architecture has been acknowledged by the Royal Institute of British Architects, who have made him an Honorary Fellow, one of only three in his field. We had the privilege to catch up with Patrick before a presentation and conduct the following interview.

BetterBricks: What and/or who has inspired you in both your career path and your commitment to sustainable design?

Bellew: The early part of my career was very much influenced by Professor Ted Happold, who was the founder of Buro Happold and was a Professor at my University from 1977. I was also influenced by Professor Derek Clements Croome, who ran the Environmental Design Module at Bath University back in the late 70's, early 80's.

Ted was a structural engineer, but was a great believer in the application of a pragmatic approach, and the qualities of reductive design for making great buildings. Derek was a very different animal, inspired by philosophy as much as engineering and a firm believer in the application of biomimicry to the development of architectural design.

I came out of Bath University in 1981, having spent four years exposed to these two amazing educators, and joined Buro Happold, which was at that time a small office in Bath. Working with a very small group of structural engineers at Buro Happold, I quickly realized that the difference between structural engineering and environmental engineering was in the way that they applied their tools and attempted to minimize and be the most economical they could be. At that time, in the field of mechanical design, there were no real guidelines for minimizing the size of plant or equipment; one never got sued for putting in equipment that was too large. There was a very limited dialogue between architecture and mechanical engineering at that time, but there was a very strong dialogue between the architect and structural engineer. That has changed a great deal in the time that I have been practicing as an engineer.

The other major inspiration on my career has been my wife, Lois. She has been a committed environmentalist since I met her, and her concerns for ecological matters have always been the key part of our conversations and discussions throughout our life together.

It was really by combining the pragmatic influences that I learned at university with her belief in the importance of minimizing building impacts, that allowed me to recognize the possible role of the mechanical designer in the production of more sustainable buildings.

Two architects that I have worked with in the UK from the very early stages of my career included Peter Clegg and Richard Feilden, of Feilden Clegg Bradley; in particular Peter was a major influence on my thinking about environmental design from the outset. He is just one of many architects that I have been fortunate enough to work with, who have been inspirational during collaboration and with whom I have enjoyed a fruitful and interesting career. I think there is no doubt that the writings of people like Amory Lovins and George Monbiot, and to some extent William McDonough, have also been an inspiration as the environmental movement has accelerated it's pace and the application of these design principals have become much more the norm.

BetterBricks: You've explored considerably the use of environmental technologies in regard to heating and cooling. How do you convince your clients to adopt these strategies and coordinate with other team members, e.g. engineers?

Bellew: We have explored and developed high performance building technologies overmany years with greater and lesser degrees of success with our clients. In every project, we attempt to bring in a degree of environmental thinking; usually phrasing it in terms of 'no-brainers' that one ought to do as a matter of course on the building. The next level are things that are slightly more of a stretch to reach, and then on to the more complex things that require a major shift in thinking about how buildings perform. We have been fortunate, however, to work with many clients for whom a push towards more sustainable design has been at the core of the selection process of their design team. In the early days, this type of client tended to be either owner/occupiers of buildings, such as universities and schools, or they would come from the government sector or cultural buildings such as art museums, schools again or public buildings of any kind. These were people who both owned and operated the buildings and, as it's now phrased, the triple bottom line applied to very well. This means that they were paying the fuel bills, and so the benefits of investment in energy reduction were clearly demonstrable throughout the life of the building. It has been far more difficult to persuade the developers of commercial buildings, who are not paying their own fuel bills, to come to the party and build high performance, sustainable buildings.

This has changed somewhat in recent years, particularly the last two years in the UK, where the corporate social responsibility demands of the potential building tenants have moved our commercial sector much more towards the development of high performance buildings. I would say this has certainly been helped by the emergence of benchmarking rating systems. In the UK this is BREEAM, and in the US this is LEED. The impact of these benchmarking systems has been really significant in encouraging developers to achieve higher standards for their buildings, and recognize that they have a better chance of leasing a building that's deemed to be high quality, than leasing a building that's either not certified or of a lower quality. In a way this is exactly what the benchmarking systems set out to achieve in the first place. They are frequently derided by the nay-sayers as being a painful process, involving too much paper pushing, and many other negatives. However, I think they add extraordinary value in providing a level playing field for comparison of designs and design qualities.

Plaza at PPL Center in Pennsylvania

Our experiences in the US in recent years have very much paralleled this situation in the UK. Our earlier projects were almost exclusively with universities and one or two enlightened developers, such as Liberty Property Trust out of Philadelphia. The universities were beginning to recognize the benefits of reducing their energy consumption and their infrastructure costs when developing new buildings, if they built them to a higher standard. At the same time, or soon after, the property development sector recognized that there were some pretty big changes on the horizon and started to respond. I wouldn't say that they are all the way there yet, but certainly a good start is being made in certain parts of the country.

To respond to the second part of the question, about how to coordinate with other team members; the truth is that sometimes it's very straight forward, and sometimes it's not. Despite the fact that it is widely recognized that the architecture of the building is a key component of the way that buildings perform, and despite the fact that all the architects that we work with seek to incorporate environmental design measures into their buildings, there still remains a reluctance on the part of many architects to compromise architectural or aesthetic considerations for a technical one, no matter how carefully they are explained!

As the calculation tools have become more user friendly and particularly more graphical in the way that they represent energy flows within buildings, we have found it increasingly viable to speak with the architects at a graphical level, get them to understand the consequences of their decisions, and start to move towards making better buildings. For the most part however, the collaborative relationship within design teams, whether it be architects or structural engineers, has been exciting and for the most part fruitful.

Nonetheless, a realistic look back at many of our projects would suggest that most clients prepare a little bit in their ambitions, but moving them to more innovative environmental ideas still remains extremely difficult. I do think that sometimes we over analyze the things that we are doing.

In the earlier part of my career, we used to do what we called "stealth" engineering where we would simply install something, such as heat recovery, as standard on all the ventilation systems in the building, having satisfied ourselves that the energy efficiency gained was worth having. We wouldn't necessarily do the detailed life cycle cost analysis to show that the client would realize a benefit over the long term, because we knew it would be so. The minute that you put it up as an additional item in the "green column" of the analysis, it is then a hostage to fortune and to budget cuts, whereas we would rather see it as being an intrinsic part of a good building. So these days, we do a combination of things that we just do as standard, and we then look for areas where we can "push the boat out" to make for buildings that move the debate about green design forward.

BetterBricks: Are you familiar with the Architecture 2030 Challenge? How would you characterize the best approach or strategies to get to net-zero carbon buildings?

Bellew: I have some knowledge of the 2030 Challenge documentation, and I think that it contains a very strong message. In the UK, our government is looking to mandate a more ambitious time line to carbon neutral buildings, aiming for the domestic sector to be carbon neutral by 2016 and the commercial sector to be carbon neutral by 2019.

There is some debate about the meaning of carbon neutral, and a particular debate is developing about the fact that the carbon neutrality of the project is intended to be established without the ability to import energy from green sources offsite, or by using certified renewable energy credits. As you can imagine, this makes life rather challenging! There is also some debate about the definition of zero carbon and the tax breaks that are being allocated to zero carbon buildings; one supposes the treasury tries to make it difficult to achieve them in order to minimize the number of tax concessions they have to give!

I wouldn't take issue with any of the points raised in the 2030 Challenge headlines, except to highlight that one thing we are very interested in looking into is how we can make the construction of new buildings somehow link to the energy reduction in the existing building stock. To me it always seems crazy to spend a million dollars on a photovoltaic array to take a building from a 60% carbon reduction to a 64% carbon reduction, when the same amount of carbon could be saved by spending $250,000 on an adjoining building or nearby housing estate. How do we put in place mechanisms to allow the money to flow from one sector to another, and avoid wasting the green dollar on uneconomic renewable energy systems, when there are much softer targets nearby? I know this is a really difficult problem to solve, but it seems to me to be one that our legislature needs to get its head around in order to allow it to become part of the planning system.

In the UK, the town of Brighton has recently introduced a system that allows developers to realize the best building performance possible by incorporating economically feasible renewable sources into the design. Any short fall from the required 10-20% renewable energy target, in effect any residual carbon emissions can be paid off via a one-off development charge. This then goes into a community fund and is used to provide zero cost installation for existing residential home owners. Installing solar panels, insulation, double-glazing and the like to dramatically improve the energy performance. Personally, I think that this is one of the biggest tools in the box beyond design for very high performance buildings.

It would be a very long interview if I were to try and deal with how you go about getting to zero carbon buildings! I think the process of demand minimization and then the installation of very high performance building systems is clearly the key, but how we deal with delivering electrical renewable energy in particular on these projects is still a very challenging question.

BetterBricks: What have you learned from your experience incorporating biomimicry principles into buildings? Any advice for architects? Or engineers?

Bellew: In my lecture I cover my favorite bit of biomimicry, which is the nest of the termite. I talk a little bit about the magnetic termite and the barossa termite. These creatures have an amazing way of constructing their nests, and in particular they use a thermal storage system contained in the ground and the earth tube that brings air into the nest. They also use evaporation of water to provide cooling in these same heat stores to produce an air conditioning effect without actually running any chillers. We have used these principals many times on our buildings to integrate subterranean thermal storage into air conditioning pre-heat and pre-cooling systems to minimize the demands on the air handling plant in the building, providing comfortable conditions with very low energy consumption. So I believe very strongly in the principal of biomimicry as a way of mirroring design techniques. However, I think there is a limit to the extent to which it can be applied. Nonetheless, I have found it extremely useful in getting across to clients the benefits of certain types of systems, and establishing a clear understanding that it's physical principles that we are working with and not smoke and mirrors!

BetterBricks: What do you see as future energy trends in the sustainable building market? What about future business opportunities?

Bellew: I think there is no doubt that the renewable energy market will follow a broad range of applications in the years to come. The question is, which one will give us the biggest benefit? I have always been a big fan of earth energy systems, and how we have applied a wide range of earth energy techniques to buildings in recent years to minimize demands and reduce or eliminate the need for air conditioning.

To me this seems to be one very logical place for us to start from. I would have to say that I am not a great believer in the application of building based wind technologies. Recent trials underway in the UK suggest that the performance of building integrated turbines are rarely as good as one would hope, largely because of the very disturbed air surrounding the buildings. The move towards biomass based heating and combined heat and power systems in the UK is gaining some momentum, and I think in a balanced, green energy world, should such a thing exist, we will be looking at a proportion of our building energy demands being met from biomass equipment. The argument about the macro economic and social economic implications of this continues to rage, and as an engineer I am not sure I have all the answers regarding what the right solution is, but I do think in the right application, biofuels have a role to play.

We have installed many solar hot-water heating systems as an integral part of both residential and office schemes, and it seems to me that this is one of the simpler technologies that we should be using a lot more. PV is altogether a more difficult question, but there are an increasing number of examples of economies that have benefited greatly from setting tariffs to generate a strong PV industry at the same time as offsetting a small proportion of building energy loads. I would certainly say that they have a role to play in the future of high performance buildings. When it comes down to it, however, the real gains that are to be made have to be in the way that architecture and engineering work together to produce buildings that are just altogether leaner and greener, and have to rely a lot less on these new technologies to meet their energy demands.

One area of design that really doesn't get enough attention in this regard, I believe, is the importance of daylighting. The more one works on projects, both in the commercial and retail sectors, the more one realizes the amount of energy we actually waste on lighting buildings when there is perfectly good daylight outside. Even in buildings that have huge amounts of glass, and on days that are not very sunny, one still sees massive amounts of lighting on. This is because lighting control systems are not adequately developed or invested in to produce the energy savings that go with good daylighting. It seems to me that there are many areas here that we can get our house in order before we move to a great and anxious debate over how big the solar panels should be.

On the positive side, there is no doubt that the future business opportunities in this area are considerable. As more and more corporations and large businesses take up their corporate social responsibility statements and start to try to make them real, they rapidly realize that it is their real estate they have to look to, to quickly promote the improvements that they are claiming. They will also be looking to occupy new buildings that have better environmental credentials than the buildings that they currently occupy. It seems to me that this is the key lever in the development of high performance buildings in the future. The future trends in this building market are all about clients demanding more, and design teams working in a more integrated way to deliver the solutions that they need.

A particular interest to us in the US market has been the emergence of the sustainable design consultant in the design team. This is the space that Atelier Ten occupies in the US, although in the UK we also work as MEP (Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing) engineers. It seems to me that the US market is very open to the idea of a designer working with the architect, helping to develop the best possible building envelope and response to orientation, massing and form, but at the same time also working with the MEP engineers to integrate high performance systems into these building envelopes. The influence will spread right down the supply chain; I am talking now about designers, but it also extends right through from material suppliers, contractors, water engineers, water treatment engineers. Everyone who is involved in some inflow or outflow from our buildings will have a part to play in building a more sustainable future for the construction industry.

Carbon Neutral and Net Zero

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:25:07 +0000

The Case for Net Zero Energy Buildings

LOTT Headquarters Renderings
courtesy of Miller Hull Partnership.

A multitude of reasons exist for designing more energy efficient buildings, from the complex and unpredictable social and economic impact of global warming to the simple and straightforward reality of rising energy prices. Quite simply, however, the writing is on the wall: our quality of life, today and in the future depends on using energy more efficiently.

Buildings account for about 40 percent of total U.S. energy use and are responsible for about 50 percent of CO2 emissions. Those of us involved in the design, construction and operation of buildings have an opportunity and a responsibility to work toward maximum levels of energy efficiency, thereby, significantly reducing CO2 emissions.

What is a Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB)?

A NZEB is a building that, on an annual basis, produces as much energy as it uses. This means that at certain times of the year it may produce more energy than it needs, while at other times it produces less. The balance is traded back and forth between the building and utility company in the form of electricity. It's also possible to go beyond net zero and design buildings that produce more energy than they use each year.

What is Carbon Neutral and How Does it Relate to NZEB's?

A building that is Carbon Neutral uses no fossil fuels in its operation, creates no direct greenhouse gases, and, as a result, does not contribute to global warming. The energy it uses may be produced on site or may be drawn from a utility grid but it must be "clean," produced by wind turbines, photovoltaics, or other renewable energy system. Thus, a building that is both Carbon Neutral and Net Zero Energy produces at least as much renewable energy as it uses each year.

Leadership is Mobilizing

Momentum is building quickly within our industry to meet the challenge of Net Zero Carbon Neutral buildings. Among the organizations that have established pertinent strategic plans and programs are:

Architecture 2030 Challengeg. Started in 2002, this non-profit's 2030 Challenge sets a timeline for reducing fossil fuel consumption to zero (i.e. Carbon Neutral) by the year 2030, starting from a 60 percent reduction in 2010, with 10 percent additional reductions every 5 years. The 2030 Challenge has been embraced by organizations including the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
US Department of Energy (DOE).DOE's Building Technologies Program calls for commercially marketable NZEB's by 2025, and focuses on better integration of existing technologies as well as development of new ones. Its Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is investing $100 million in technology research and development to help achieve the 2025 goal.
US Green Building Council(USGBC). It's hard to find anyone in our industry who has not heard of the USGBC's LEED program, a now common measurement standard for green buildings. The local "Cascadia" chapter of the USGBC has raised the bar even higher with its "Living Building Challenge," which sets forth 16 prerequisites that all buildings must meet, including net zero energy.
ASHRAE. This organization of mechanical engineers has rolled out the "ASHRAE Vision 2020" program, focused on developing the "the tools necessary to design, construct, and operate NZEB's" so that they are market-viable by 2030. ASHRAE aims to have the necessary tools in place by 2020 and has already completed its Advanced Energy Guides for small office buildings, small retail buildings, K-12 schools, and small warehouses. In the works are user-friendly energy modeling interfaces, target energy budgets for building types and climates, and, by working with manufacturers and others, equipment with greatly reduced plug loads.

PSU Engineering Building.
Rendering courtesy of ZGF Architects

The path to a Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB)

Designing and constructing a NZEB requires commitment,special expertise, and collaboration in an integrated design process, from all members of the project team including the building owner or developer, architect, engineers, contractor, and even the building occupants. The path to net zero can be summarized as follows:

Establishing clear, aggressive energy goals and communicating them to all members of the project team is a crucial first step. Unlike the process of traditional projects, all decisions affecting a NZEB need to be made in the context of their impact on energy usage. This is a way of thinking that requires a commitment to educate and a willingness to learn on the part of all team members.
Understand the Climate. Traditional designs have focused on maintaining comfort in climatic extremes such as the hottest summers and coldest winters while frequently paying little attention to opportunities for savings when conditions lie between those extremes. More sophisticated controls, better equipment turndown options, and other readily-available technologies and techniques allow buildings to be in better sync with local climate conditions and energy demands throughout the year.
Reduce Energy Loads and Use. Detailed knowledge of how energy will be used in the building will inform choices about where to save energy. Architectural factors such as building orientation, massing and geometry, percentage glazing, insulating values for walls, roof and glass, and daylighting obviously have a huge impact on overall building energy use. The energy efficiencies of equipment used by building occupants also need to be optimized - from computers and copy machines to refrigerators and microwaves-with automatic controls to reduce or eliminate energy consumption when equipment is not in use. Efficient HVAC systems that use no fossil fuels and lighting systems that rely more on daylighting need to be designed in an integrated fashion with the architectural systems. (New Directions in HVAC for a brief listing of such systems)
Utilize Natural Energy Resources. In different areas of Oregon, for example, we see many types of natural energy available at the building site: solar (for heat and/or electricity), wind, wave, biofuels, geothermal and hydroelectric. Green power is also available for purchase from most local utilities. Harvesting these natural energy resources may be the area where the most opportunities exist, and the most progress will be made in the coming years. They are approaching cost effectiveness, especially with assistance from government and utility rebate and incentive programs.

How Close are We?

Our region's building industry is recognized nationally for its tremendous strides in the pursuit of buildings that are carbon neutral and net zero energy. While there are not yet any completed net zero buildings in the region, a few examples from Washington and Oregon, of buildings that are representative of these efforts are:

The Columbian Headquarters. This LEED Gold certified office building in Vancouver, Washington uses 50 percent less energy than code, and with substantial help from its open loop geothermal heating and cooling system, is very nearly carbon neutral.
LOTT Wastewater Alliance Headquarters. Located near Washington's state capitol complex in Olympia, this building will use 40 percent less energy than code and draw much of the energy it does use from a methane-fired, combined heat and power (CHP) plant. The methane will come from LOTT's nearby wastewater treatment plant, where it is a waste byproduct.
Tillamook Forest Center. Tucked in the forest near the Oregon coast, this interpretive center uses 30 percent less energy than code and is heating by boilers that use wood pellets produced from local forest waste products. It approaches carbon neutrality.
Morken Center for Learning and Technology at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). This building on PLU's campus in Tacoma, Washington uses 45 percent less energy than code, with help from natural daylighting, high efficiency artificial lighting, and a closed loop geothermal heating and cooling system. It is the first carbon neutral building at PLU, which aims to become a completely carbon neutral campus by 2020.
Port of Portland Headquarters/Airport Parking Structure (HQP2). Pursuing LEED Platinum certification, projected to use 50 percent less energy than code, this under-construction project features natural daylighting, high efficiency lighting, and a closed loop geothermal heating and cooling system. With help from green utility power, this building will be carbon neutral.
Sokol Blosser Winery Barrel Storage Facility. Among the earliest LEED-rated projects, this facility in Oregon's Willamette Valley uses earth berming to reduce heating and cooling loads and draws all its energy from a photovoltaic (solar-electric) system. This makes it a carbon neutral Net Zero Energy building
Shizen Condominiums. This small condominium complex planned in Portland is projected to use 60 percent less energy than code because of its high performance envelope, photovoltaic system, and biofuel combined heat and power (CHP) system. It is aimed at net zero energy use.

PLU Morken Center.
Photos by Ekert & Ekert Photography.
Courtesy of ZGF Architects

The technology and knowledge base to design and construct Carbon Neutral and Net Zero Energy Buildings exists today, and the momentum to do so is growing rapidly. For those of us involved in the pursuit of sustainable buildings, it is an exciting time.

In the years to come we'll stand together to meet the challenge of designing cost effective buildings that use no net energy and have no negative impacts on the environment around them. We'll do it because it has to be done, and because we are the only ones who can do it.

Additional Resources

Another excellent article on the topic, "The Zero Effect" can be found in Engineering News Record, June 16, 2008.
A number of carbon calculators are available through the Web. EPA has developed several. One calculator that adjusts for specific regional power supply mix is EPA's PowerProfiler.

Written by Paul Schwer, P.E. LEED AP, President of PAE Consulting Engineers, Inc., a leader in sustainably focused mechanical and electrical engineering services and based in Portland, OR. He was named Engineer of the Year in 2004 by BetterBricks, the commercial buildings initiative of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, for his commitment to sustainable, high performance buildings. That same year, the Sustainable Industries Journal named him one of the top 25 Green Building Leaders in the Northwest. He is featured in the new nationally-aired documentary "A Passion for Sustainability."

Mount Angel ID Roundtable - Part III

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:58:47 +0000

Part III of III- Building Envelope (see Part I and II)

The following article is the third installment of a three part series drawn from a roundtable discussion that occurred in August 2007 about integrated design, among principal project team members responsible for design of the Annunciation New Center for Theological Studies graduate theology building at Mount Angel Abbey. The cross-disciplinary collaboration among project team members was a hallmark of this project, but specific areas of responsibility are indicated for each of the panel participants.

Father Michael Mee served as the Chair of the Building Committee and became involved several years before the actual design process started, as the Monastic Community and Building Committee composed their ideas about project aspirations.

Kent Duffy, FAIA is a Principal of SRG Partnership, Inc., the project architect, and served as Principal in Charge and Project Designer.

Michael Hatten, P.E. is a Principal of SOLARC Architecture and Engineering and was the mechanical engineer and energy engineer for the project.

G.Z. "Charlie" Brown, FAIA, is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon and Director of the Energy Studies in Building Laboratory (ESBL). Under his leadership the ESBL designed, built, and monitored the performance of a full-size classroom prototype, in order to facilitate project team investigation and evaluation of daylighting, night ventilation of building mass, integration of mechanical and electrical systems, and to inform and define the passive systems approach that was incorporated into the project.

Building Loads

Mount Angel Exterior

Mike Hatten ("MH"): Here are a few glimpses into our integrated design thinking. We moved from an understanding of the loads to the system concepts. Initially, we were trying to imagine what would happen at night during the cooling season, what would happen during the day, and what would happen during the transition from night to day. Those of you who have been working on LEED projects and projects where there's formal commissioning have begun to ask these kinds of questions.

Outside air ventilation is the most significant building load, with significant implications for how we address systems concepts. As a general principle, one may want to seriously consider dealing with ventilation in a separate, dedicated way, not just as part of a set of mixed air dampers with air handlers on the roof. In fact, that approach did get expressed in this design, as heat recovery ventilators. Each classroom has its own dedicated heat recovery ventilator. And then for the more complex and integrated spaces-the offices and corridors-there is a building level heat recovery ventilator on the roof that provides ventilation air to some of the other building spaces.

The heating load for this building is almost all about ventilation, easily seen when we graphed heating and cooling loads. We're actually seeing between 70 and 80 percent effectiveness in the heat recovery ventilators that went into this design, reducing the effective heating load to about one-quarter of what the actual load is.

Kent Duffy ("KD"): The building has a modest heating system to provide perimeter heating to meet the remaining heating load. There is no active cooling system. We have made some corrections this summer because we had trouble in the winter with some air infiltration that was greater than we expected. So, there's slightly more perimeter radiant heat than what we included in the original design, and we're working to seal infiltration sites.

As we began to get some experience with this building-it happened to come on line right at the beginning of the heating season-we quickly found out that our assumptions of how much outside air would move through this passively functioning building differed from how much was actually circulating, a very cogent, specific example of where the real world meets integrated design assumptions - in this case, the infiltration component of the building loads.

There is a conference room on the classroom level (the second floor), with a shaft that goes all the way up, through the building, to bring daylight into the conference room, but it's also the ventilation path for the entire second floor to ventilate out the top of the building.

MH: The doors on either side of the classroom windows are manually opened and they have continuous louvers, top to bottom. Above the window is another set of dampers, which are automatically controlled, allowing air to move above the plane of the ceiling and through the room, cooling thermal mass in the floor and the roof. The air flows through the entire volume of the room and vacates through turbine ventilators on the roof above the corridor. We have thermal mass and ceiling fans, a combination that increases comfort range. You normally design a space to allow the temperature in summer to float up to about 78 degrees, but we have actually designed to allow the temperature to get to 83 degrees while maintaining comfort equivalent to what you would have at 78 degrees.

G.Z. "Charlie" Brown ("CB"): The ASHRAE comfort zone is defined so that when building conditions are maintained within that zone it can be expected that 20 percent of the occupants will remain uncomfortable. So designers also have to manage expectations about what a building can actually achieve.

KD: The analogy that I always use is, if you're in the sun, you would feel hot. And if you walked under the shade of a tree with dappled light and a gentle breeze blowing across you, you would feel comfortable. It's the same air temperature, but you would be comfortable. It's a matter of tuning the comfort of people rather than adjusting the building temperature.

Classrooms

MH: So, in a classroom at Mount Angel, during a summer night, in cooling mode, the automatic louvers open up, both on the outlets and the inlets, and we're bringing air through to cool thermal mass in the floors and ceilings, in preparation for the next day where we'll be seeing the cooling loads.

There are some interesting transitional issues that are layered into those automatic controls. One is that we are trying to sense mass temperature in several places in the floor in this building to tell these various automatic controls when to stop the night ventilation mode so we don't overcool the classroom. We are also locking out the heating, because we intend to depress the first few hours' temperature below the mid-60s-we don't want the heating system to come on the following morning. So, two pieces are there-the mass temperature sensing and lockout of the heating system the following morning-to really make this night flush system work without incurring an energy penalty.

When we get to a summer day, we automatically close two of the louvers. Additional louvers are manually controlled, so there is an expectation that occupants, as they become more aware of the dynamics of the room, begin to understand how to manage some of the elements of the comfort system in this room. Occupants can also manipulate the ceiling fans and use the cool surface temperatures to help maintain comfort.

CB: The automatic louver system is designed to handle enough ventilation and enough cooling of the mass on an average cooling day, that you won't need the manual windows at all. You only need to employ the manual windows when you have an extreme day, when they would be opened to increase ventilation. The reason why there's an automated component and a manual component is because the manual windows are a lot cheaper to build and they're not used very much and the penalty we pay for not having them used properly is small compared to potential problems with additional, more complicated automation.

KD: And I would go one step further to mention that each classroom is a stand-alone system, you can operate an individual classroom while the other classrooms remain in an unoccupied mode. Every classroom has its own ventilator.

Offices

Mount Angel office

MH: I just want to mention a little about the offices. From my perspective, as one of the designers of the natural ventilation cooling system, the offices and the office wing were a significantly more complex undertaking (than the classrooms).

To really figure out how air is going to move from inlets in the offices to outlets located in conference rooms is really an integrated design challenge because there are code issues that have to be dealt with by the architectural designers. We need to have a way to transfer air from multiple rooms- via transoms, using hallways, open doors, and ultimately exhausting through outlets located in conference rooms. The complexity of the required airflow is significant and it's one of those issues that, if you're going to tackle integrated design challenges, you really need to get the whole team sitting around the table and engaging in a series of discussions of how "smart" your air is going to be.

Ventilation in the offices is done passively. The offices are not served by heat recovery ventilators, all the windows are operable, and all of the office occupants have control over a dedicated air inlet damper, as well. So they can use both the windows and their dampers to bring in fresh air as needed.

KD: There are manually operated transoms above the office doors and so it's up to an office occupant to open them for air circulation. Or, if you have too much ventilation, you close the transom. If you're here during the day and your door is open, it's no problem. But the big thing with night flush is to move air through the office at night when you're not here. So, it's important to leave the transom open and also to open the air inlet damper under the window.
Air is drawn through each of the offices in independent patterns, and each office operates as an independent system. So, you can have people occupying offices on different schedules all summer long without trying to make all this space operate at the same temperature.

Article by Jeff Cole, Konstrukt, Inc for BetterBricks. For details about Mount Angel Abbey, please see an overview brochure on the Annunciation New Center for Theological Studies developed by SRG Partnerships, Inc.

Photos of Mount Angel building are credited to Lara Swimmer Photography.

Drawing and schematics were taken from a presentation given by G.Z Brown, University of Oregon, Energy Studies in Buildings Lab and Mike Hatten, Solarc Architecture and Engineering, Inc. entitled "How to Use Performance Modeling to Support the Integrated Design Process - Case Study: High Performance Classroom and Mount Angel Academic Building."

Mount Angel ID Roundtable Discussion-Part II

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:13:30 +0000

Part II of III - Daylighting (see Part I and III)

The following article, focused on daylighting, continues the roundtable discussion about integrated design, among principal project team members responsible for design of the Annunciation New Center for Theological Studies graduate theology building at Mount Angel Abbey. The participants in this segment of the Roundtable are:

Kent Duffy, FAIA, a Principal of SRG Partnership, Inc. He was the project architect, and also served as Principal in Charge and Project Designer.

G.Z. "Charlie" Brown, FAIA, Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon and Director of the Energy Studies in Building Laboratory (ESBL). Under his leadership the ESBL designed, built, and monitored the performance of a full-size classroom prototype, in order to facilitate project team investigation and evaluation of daylighting, night ventilation of building mass, integration of mechanical and electrical systems. The prototype also informed and defined the passive systems approach that was incorporated into the project.

Father Michael Mee served as the Chair of the Building Committee. He began working on this project several years before the actual design process started, as the Monastic Community and Building Committee composed their ideas about project aspirations, and maintained his involvement through the construction phase and occupancy.

Kent Duffy: When we think of LEED standards for daylight, we shoot for an average daylight factor of two. The Mount Angel Abbey Academic Center aims higher than that, so that we can still get the minimum amount of light we need into the building during the winter days when there's not very much light available in the morning and in the afternoon. This objective resulted in an "oversized" skylight (compared with typical LEED designs, as well as most daylighting projects) with operable louvers to let the appropriate amount of daylight into the classrooms at any given time. Sensors determine how much daylight is available. Then a control system adjusts the louvers to the proper position to allow just as much light as we want into the space. And I must say that there was sudden applause in my heart when we walked in here before the classroom was finished-with 9,000 foot-candles outside, we closed the louvers, and there were 45 in the room-which was exactly what we hoped for.

One of the big challenges was distributing the light effectively throughout the room. It's not hard to put a skylight in a room, but it is hard to put one in a room without getting a big pocket of glare on one spot and almost no light in another, with a huge contrast between the two. We needed to find an effective way to distribute the light. So these triangular shaped tubes present a flat surface essentially parallel to the sloping plane of the ceiling. They distribute the light to the perimeter of the room. And the tubes are triangular because we wanted to not look up and see the reflector in silhouette against the skylight. So, by getting raking light across the angled faces, we reduce the glare on the silhouette of those elements and distribute the light throughout the room while keeping the ceiling from being dark.

G.Z. Charlie Brown: One of the things that we try to do, in our research role, is provide clear evidence that something will work before we try to use it in the design process. So, when Kent came and looked at the little black box model for our high performance classroom project, we'd already determined that, "Here are some measurements that show, from a daylighting standpoint, that it will probably work." Kent was kind enough and confident enough to say, "Well, I'd like to use that in a building," and we said, "We would love it, but... this is a model, we need to build a full-size prototype in order to assure ourselves and the client that this will work." And in my view, it works. It has a few little flaws that can be refined in future projects.

The skylight louvers allow us to control this skylight. But, in our full-sized classroom prototype, when we put the louvers in, we still ended up with a bright spot in the middle of the room and we got even lower light levels along the edge. The average daylight factor dropped to about four percent, which is about where we wanted it to be, except that distribution was terrible. We made it worse rather than better when we put the shading louvers in.

So, the next thing we did was put in an earlier version of the reflector. And if you'll look at the model, you can see the reflector in it. This is what it originally looked like. All of a sudden, with the reflector, we were able to demonstrate a totally different distribution of light within our model. It's about the same on average-it's a little higher here-but the middle has gone down while the sides have gone up. Now, that's pretty amazing to say I've got a big hole and, all of a sudden I'm not going to get most of the light right under it, I'm going to get more on the edges. We didn't have this in mind. We were trying to solve this problem as we went along. All of a sudden we put this model in the Overcast Sky Box and measured the results and, lo and behold, it did this marvelous thing.

Daylighting Reflector in Classroom

A product manufactured by CPI is used in the skylights. It was designed for solar shading, not for daylighting, so it follows the sun and does all sorts of things. To CPI's credit, they did a lot of work on this product for our application. We did a lot of modifications to the controls to get it to work as well as it does. So, then we said, let's see what happens with the kind of louvers that are in the CPI product. We learned that the average daylight factor was 3.8-very close to the 4.0 we were after, and the distribution was completely even, much more even than what you would get out of an electric lighting system. So, it was at this point we were leaping about the Lab, saying, "Eureka! Eureka!"

Okay, so this chart shows the illumination with a four percent daylight factor and these are months of the year and these are times of the day, these are all the times when it was above 20 foot-candles with a four percent daylight factor. Twenty foot-candles was the minimum target that we had for this space. You can see there is a lot of the time that you can achieve that with a four percent daylight factor. And if you shift that distribution a little bit in time you can do even better. So, this is a use pattern issue. Can they use this building when the light level is adequate? We talked to the Abbey and we looked at it and we said this happens to match really well the use patterns of the school. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the right amount of light penetration and reflectivity off of the reflector to get it to work right. We built the first reflector in the full size prototype classroom. It was so ugly that we didn't even finish it. But number two was one that we did a better job at. We spent a lot of time building a series of reflector sections for Kent, trying out round, triangular and flat shapes.

Father Michael Mee: The monastic community wanted a building that expresses our Benedictine values of quality and permanence. One example of that is the lighting, which goes beyond just the energy efficiency the lighting provides, to a theological aspect. The students who study here are studying theology-the study of God-and preparing themselves for the priesthood. They sit in these classrooms so filled with wonderful light, but, of course, they're to be enlightened in these classrooms, as well. It's not enough that they're bathed in light, their minds are to be bathed in light, they are to be enlightened. And for us that source of light and enlightenment is the same as God. So, if you will, the building itself is teaching.

Photos of Mount Angel building are credited to Lara Swimmer Photography.

Eco-Charrette

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:35:55 +0000

by Nathan Good

What, exactly, is an eco-charrette? It's an intense meeting, half a day or more, in which all participants in a building design project focus on ideas for efficient use of energy and resources in the new building. The group generates goals and then develops strategies for accomplishing those goals. Eco-charrettes, also called sustainable design or environmental design charrettes, are becoming a common element in the design of high performance buildings and have been used successfully on some of the most progressive buildings in the Pacific Northwest.

A Brief History
The word charrette is derived from the French word for cart. At the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in the 19th century, proctors would circulate with charrettes at the deadline hour, collecting the drawings of the student apprentices for delivery to the master artist for critique. Apprentices would jump onto the carts with their drawings, often still frantically making last-minute changes. Thus, the word conveys a sense of the intensive, concentrated effort.

These days, the charrette is a tool for moving a development project through phases of design quickly and efficiently. It is a carefully orchestrated event in which the participants, the schedule, and the location are chosen to encourage focused creativity within a structured framework.

A well-conducted charrette pulls the right people with the necessary skills together to make decisions within a short period, thus saving substantial time and money. The final result is a concrete plan that helps key decision makers understand the practical implications of a concept for a project.

Description of an Eco-Charrette
The concept might sound familiar, but the eco-charrette differs from a project team kick-off meeting because it generally focuses on sustainable development goals, strategies, and integrated design solutions.

The eco-charrette process begins when a new project is launched, sometimes before architects and engineers have been hired. The facilitator may interview the client before the eco-charrette to determine the client's environmental and energy efficiency goals for the project and the desired outcomes for the work session. It is also common for sustainability goals and objectives to be developed during the eco-charrette.

Once the design team for the project has been selected, the entire team-architect, engineers, contractor, building user representatives, and owner-meets in the eco-charrette for at least a day, sometimes two or more, to devise strategies for attaining the project's goals for sustainability and energy efficiency. Multi-day charrettes can also be used to launch the architectural design of a project.

To achieve greatest success in an eco-charrette, it should involve everyone-that is, anyone who might build, approve, use, sell, or even attempt to block the project. We all know that when people are involved from the outset, they are more likely to feel ownership of, and work for, the success of the project.

The time spent in the eco-charrette is designed to be highly productive, and profound change can result. Each participant brings specialized expertise or knowledge that may contribute to achieving the goals. The eco-charrette enables a group of people to discover solutions themselves, which creates a sense of ownership and consensus. For a sustainable building project, this is a formula for success.

A Successful Eco-Charrette (a true story)

THE CLIENT wanted to optimize use of natural light in his new office building and contain costs. THE ARCHITECT proposed high-performance glazing for the windows to maximize light coming into the building and to control heat loss. THE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERTHE CONTRACTOR surmised that the glazing and the lights with sensors would substantially increase the project budget. In response, THE MECHANICAL ENGINEERTHE CONTRACTOR determined that this integrated solution would reduce total project cost. Furthermore, THE ELECTRIC UTILITY REPRESENTATIVE offered substantial rebates for the high-performance glass, energy-efficient light fixtures, and daylight sensors. THE OWNER was delighted with this collaborative problem solving.suggested using fluorescent lamps with light sensors to modulate the electric light in proportion to available natural light, and then proceeded to calculate the annual savings. suggested smaller mechanical units because the building would be in a cooling mode most of the year and the electric light fixtures would be a source of heat. Quickly calculating the cost of the smaller mechanical units,

THE RESULT: a high-performance building for less cost, annual energy savings, and naturally lit interior spaces for the building's users.

Architecture 2030 Challenge

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:32:39 +0000

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In response to global climate change, key leaders of the building design industry have established a goal of "zero net energy" buildings by the year 2030. In May 2007, representatives of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), Architecture 2030 Challenge, the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), supported by representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy, finalized an agreement of understanding that they hope will result in carbon-neutral buildings.

The Challenge
This agreement provides a common basis and measure of progress as building design professionals create greater numbers of buildings that use substantially less energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create spaces that are healthy and comfortable. The agreement specifies energy performance targets, beginning with an immediate reduction of 50 percent in energy use for all new buildings . This target increases rapidly, with a 60 percent reduction proposed for 2010, adding an additional 10 percent reduction every five years, until carbon neutral buildings are the norm by 2030.

How to Get There?
With the introduction of the Challenge, the design community is asking… How will these targets be reached? Is it possible? Well, it's clear that getting to these targets will require significant changes in the way buildings are designed and built. Rapid diffusion of innovation will be required. New technologies and building materials will make a contribution, but the fundamental innovations needed to immediately cut average energy use in half will have to come from designers learning to rethink the way they design buildings.

Search for Synergies
Many initiatives are being made to formalize an "integrated design" process. Among these efforts, G.Z. Brown, FAIA, Director of the Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory at Department of Architecture of the University of Oregon, collaborating with practitioners such as Kent Duffy, FAIA, SRG Partnership, and Michael Hatten, PE, SOLARC Architecture and Engineering, has been refining integrated design practices that deliver buildings with exceptional energy performance. Says Brown, "The heart of the integrated design process is the search for synergies among attributes of climate, use, design, and systems, that will result in increased performance, while reducing project first cost and operating expense."

Designers practice within a number of constraints: a client's program and the needs of occupants; building codes and zoning requirements; site-specific limitations; the impact of climate; the need to integrate multiple building systems; and the performance capabilities of equipment, technologies and materials. A building's energy performance is broadly determined by four general sets of criteria among these constraints: climate, use, design, and systems. One of the approaches that Brown uses and BetterBricks is promoting to help designers create synthesis, is to begin seeing these constraints as opportunities to generate significant energy savings.

Key Recommendations
Below are a few key recommendations, organized by the four sets of criteria:

Climate. Analyze local site and climate resources for heating, cooling, and lighting: analyze climate effects and resources, the coincidence of climate and building use patterns, and how climate can complement building systems.

Use. Analyze owner and user needs and creatively consider schedules and comfort criteria when developing the program and establishing the construction budget. Most buildings are either unoccupied or are partially occupied, most of the time. Buildings should be designed as carefully for these periods as they are for peak periods. The potential benefits of flexible, rather than fixed, occupancy schedules should also be considered. Classify spaces by the degree of individual ownership and control of thermal and visual conditions.

Loads. Understand the implications of building form, organization, and envelope and the selection of materials-mass, insulation and glazing, for example-upon loads. Use building design to create smaller loads (reducing system costs). This includes passive strategies such as daylighting and natural ventilation.

Systems. Design the building to improve efficiency and performance and to reduce the cost of multiple and redundant building systems: structural, mechanical, electrical, lighting, acoustic, and civil. Explore building and site design opportunities to reduce or eliminate HVAC system loads. Separate the ventilation system from heating and cooling systems.

When loads are significantly reduced, the number of hours the HVAC and lighting systems are used becomes smaller. Make sure that HVAC and lighting system choices and sizing are based upon the actual schedule and the severity of actual loads rather than prescriptive design conditions. Select high efficiency equipment to meet the reduced loads.

Rethinking Design
Many architects describe conceptual design, schematic design, design development and the preparation of construction documents as a design process, when it might be more accurately described as a schedule for deliverables and budgeting. When discussing the practice of integrated design, Brown makes a distinction between those aspects of project management that remain closely tied to the project schedule and the aspects of integrated design that can proceed more independently throughout the project phases.

The discussion of who to involve early in the process, when and how often various project team members should meet, how to improve communication and interactions, and the organization and structure of charrettes and work sessions are certainly important. These elements of integrated design are discussed in more detail in the Tools and Resources Section - Integrated Design

While the search for synthesis and new design solutions is less likely to happen when the members of a design team work in relative isolation, they won't necessarily be enhanced in project team meetings with broad agendas that must also meet the needs of non-designers. Ensuring that activities such as goal setting, commissioning, and energy modeling are properly scheduled and receive the attention required by the team, will help to ensure a successful project and verify project performance, but significant breakthroughs in building energy performance will take place when the design process supports the search for synthesis. Therefore it is recommended that there either be two sets of meetings, or two parts of each meeting: one for goal setting, process and management and another for technical design solutions.

There are critical points where the design process and the project schedule intersect, where proper coordination will provide distinct benefit. By scheduling certain tasks at particular times or in a given sequence, the project manager can facilitate a design that strives for increased performance. It's also recommended that full team meetings be held at key points along the project schedule to check on progress toward the goals.

Michael Hatten, a mechanical engineer with SOLARC Architecture and Engineering, who has worked with Brown to advance the practice of integrated design, has observed the breakthroughs that can emerge from a project team's exploration of new techniques.

"Sometimes the past experience of a design team can become a barrier to new systems thinking. When a team is guided through those barriers by defining the effect of load reducing design strategies using modeling techniques, a conceptual awakening can happen. The "light bulb" comes on as folks realize that, once heating, cooling, and electric loads are moved into a new range, systems possibilities are greatly expanded. This is where building design becomes exciting: where the mechanical engineer and architect begin to collaborate on the design of external shading devices as a cooling system element of a building, and where the reality of achieving zero-energy performance in a building moves from an abstract dream to an achievable design goal.

For example, the evaluation of load reducing design strategies in the high performance classroom, that ultimately inspired the classroom design at Mount Angel Abbey Academic Center in Oregon, indicated that it was possible to maintain occupant comfort without any conventional mechanical systems. Cooling season comfort was maintained by passive ventilation and internal thermal mass. Heating season comfort was maintained by energizing electric lighting (or small electric heaters). In a very real integrated way, the heating and cooling systems were actually a synthesis of envelope insulation, floor and ceiling mass, and daylighting strategies."

The Project Manager's Role
The role of the project manager is critical to the successful delivery of an integrated design process. A project manager can take very real steps to organize project roles and responsibilities to deliver integrated solutions that meet project performance goals. Such steps may include.

Train staff in the use of design tools and analytical techniques that help reveal synergistic opportunities between context, programming, and architectural and engineering design.
Assign individuals the responsibility for delivering integrated solutions or specific services. For example, rather than maintaining daylighting design and electric lighting as separate activities, task someone with an integrated lighting solution.

Commissioning and post-occupancy evaluation are two additional activities, not directly related to the design process, which should be added to the project schedule because of the quality of the information they can provide. Commissioning is critical to assure that the design intent and owner's requirements are met and that systems function as designed. Post-occupancy evaluation will help measure, verify, and document building performance and occupant satisfaction; and provide important feedback about the success of integrated design solutions that the design team can incorporate into a continuous improvement process.

Integrated design, with the potential to spur rethinking of the design process, can make an enormous contribution toward achieving 2030 Challenge goals.

Kent Duffy, FAIA, SRG Architects, when speaking of his experiences exploring integrated design solutions on projects such as the Lillis Business Complex (University of Oregon, Eugene, OR) and the Mount Angel Abbey Academic Center (Saint Benedict, OR) has said:

"Creating buildings of this caliber requires a remarkable level of collaboration founded upon four important cornerstones: 1) a knowledge base that comes from in-depth research; 2) exceptional engineering that efficiently reaps the rich potential of latent environmental forces such as daylight, radiant energy, wind, and pressure differentials; 3) great care in shaping spaces that inspire the people who occupy them as well as thoroughly addressing their comfort; and 4) clearly communicating all of this to those who will occupy, operate and maintain these buildings so that the buildings can, in fact, live up to projected levels of effectiveness and environmental benefit."

Kent Duffy, SRG Partnerships

By Jeff Cole, Konstrukt, Inc. for BetterBricks

Case Studies

admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:11:48 +0000

The following list of case studies focus specifically on energy management within the design and construction of various building types. If you don't find what you are looking for here, please visit the DOE's High Performance Building database.

An Interview with Peter Rumsey

admin — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:02:32 +0000

Download a PDF of this interview

BetterBricks recently caught up with owner and managing principal of Rumsey Engineers, Peter Rumsey. Peter has worked in engineering and energy consulting since the mid 1980s, and is widely recognized as global player in energy efficiency and a leader in sustainable building design.

BetterBricks: What and/or who has inspired your career path and commitment to sustainable design?

Rumsey: In the late seventies, I was a student at UC Berkley and watched the nation go through this difficult energy crisis due to oil shocks from Arab oil embargos. I remember long lines at gas stations and the escalating national concern regarding energy. This problem really directed my attention to sustainable design and renewable energy. Concurrently, there was controversy surrounding the boom in construction of new power plants. Additionally, tax credits were starting to take off in California within the solar and wind energy industries.

All of these events set the stage for me to start thinking about sustainable design. It was clear that energy efficiency and renewable energy were key parts of the solution, both being cost effective and beneficial to the environment. And they're still part of the solution.

I was also greatly influenced by my mentor, Lee Eng Lock (1) from Singapore, who inspired me to focus on sustainable design. I met him when I was in Southeast Asia working on energy issues. On a more conceptual level, I have also been inspired by people like Amory Lovins.

BetterBricks: For a long time now you've explored the use of integrated design in regard to mechanical and electrical systems. How do you arrive at integrated solutions and how do you convince your clients of these strategies and coordinate with other team members, particularly architects?

Lewis & Clark State Office Building

Rumsey: Arriving at an integrated design solution can happen many different ways. In low-energy design, it takes a whole team to be fully onboard and the person that'sgoing to rally the team around a common understanding is the person who hired the design team in the first place. Integration happens from all of the team members working together. If we are not all on the same page about making sustainability a priority, then we're not all going to work together to achieve that goal.

Once everybody is on the same page, it becomes a question of what we can do within the budget while looking at affordable solutions for sustainability. As designers, we are very good at solving problems and coming up with solutions within these parameters. We spend a lot of time thinking about not just how to make buildings low-energy, but also how to make them affordable. As a result, we constantly look for strategies to achieve a low-energy building at comparable costs to a standard building. For instance, adding more insulation will not only save energy, but allow for a smaller heating and cooling system. Less money is spent on purchasing this equipment, which compensates for the added cost of insulation. We look for these synergies and interactions in order to keep sustainability affordable.

BetterBricks: I'm sure you are familiar with the AIA's 2030 Challenge. How would you characterize the best approach or strategies to get to net-zero carbon buildings?

Rumsey: The energy efficiency strategies will be, in almost every case, more affordable than a renewable strategy like a photovoltaic system. The tax incentives and rebates offered for photovoltaic systems are not that bad in terms of affordability and pay back, but the energy efficiency strategies are always cheaper. When we work on zero-energy buildings, we typically aim for 50 percent or lower energy use compared to the traditional building code required, which is already beating the current 2030 Challenge target. We build beyond the energy savings, which makes the photovoltaic systems smaller and more affordable.

It is fairly straightforward and easy when you are looking at a single or two-story building, but it gets trickier when we are dealing with multi-story buildings. We have to start thinking about putting photovoltaics on the façade, using open space over parking areas and supplementing photovoltaics a little bit more. We've even worked on seven-story, 700,000 square-foot office building outside of Paris that went beyond net-zero and to net-positive energy. There are examples of larger buildings going for this, but then this kind of effort begins to influence the shape, orientation and other design elements of the building.

BetterBricks: What have you learned from your experience applying Factor 10 2 concepts to buildings? Any advice for architects or engineers?

Rumsey: There are several steps. The first is to determine the building occupants' needs and requirements and how to reduce the load. We use simple Victorian engineering, as I like to call it, to come up with strategies that will lower energy use. It's a straightforward progression of steps of first lowering the load followed by making sure we are right-sizing and not over-sizing equipment.

Stop Waste Building

We then move on to maximizing the use of natural sources of heating and cooling, such as natural ventilation, passive solar, nighttime purge of buildings in the summer, etc. Next, we select energy efficient equipment that is much smaller and simpler. Last and not least, we apply controls carefully and judiciously, but not excessively.

Conceptually it is very straightforward. If you meticulously follow all of those steps and pay attention to the details, you will get stunning results.

Amory Lovins has talked about the concept of "tumbling through the cost barrier" for many years. Can we get even more savings at a lower cost than what we thought was possible? I like to apply this idea to existing building systems such as Variable Air Volume (VAV) systems that are typical in commercial office buildings. We can take the VAV system and improve it bit-by-bit and get it better or we could just change out the whole design and come up with a better heating and cooling system, which we've done in several buildings. If we start with a new system, we've found that we can indeed get this Factor-10 energy savings at a reasonable cost and often times comparable to the standard system.

Tahoe Center

In this approach, we are reinventing how we design buildings and are making tremendous changes in the way we view our buildings. In order to arrive at this reinvention, we have to pay very close attention to the details. What we are finding is that architects and engineers have to carefully collaborate from the start. For instance, the type of glazing an architect selects has a huge impact on my success in the project as an engineer. As a result, we're very interactive with architects, whereas in the past it's been much more of a relaxed thing. We could let the architects do what they please and we engineers could do what we want and sort of meet somewhere in the middle. It's not like that anymore, especially if we're trying to achieve this next generation of building.

BetterBricks: What do you see as future trends or new approaches with regards to energy in new construction projects? What about future business opportunities in the sustainable building market?

Rumsey: The trend in residential and commercial buildings is toward zero energy, which will be center stage over the next 10 years. Current legislation in California requires that the majority of new residential and commercial buildings are to be built in a zero energy fashion by 2030. As the price of energy continues to stay high and concerns of climate change continue to grow, we're going to be talking a lot about this issue. There is going to be a huge amount of time, effort and money spent on going back and retrofitting and renovating existing buildings. That is where the majority of energy needs to be saved because that is where the vast majority of energy is being consumed.

Department of Global Ecology

The biggest area for business opportunities are with companies that can renovate and improve existing residential and commercial buildings. These strategies are straightforward, make sense and don't necessarily require the invention of new equipment. Over the next 10 years, we'll see government and utility incentives making retrofits very attractive. What's more, renovating and retrofitting buildings is vastly cheaper than drilling new oil wells and building new power plants. It's one of the cheapest sources available in reducing carbon. We'll see a great deal of focus on retrofitting and renovating because it is so affordable and plays a vital role in restoring the environment.

(1) Known globally for his singular contribution to cleanroom and energy efficient building design, Lee Eng Lock is director and founder of Supersymmetry Services, a Singapore-based engineering with projects in Asia and North America.

(2) Factor 10 refers to the possibility of creating products and services that have a massively lower resource intensity than the conventional alternative.

Design Firm Business Practices

admin — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:00:05 +0000

As the number of clients that expect buildings to perform at high levels increases, architects and engineers seeking to provide services to them will need to set strategic goals for improving their firm's capabilities to design and deliver high performance buildings and to be convincing about their skills and approach. This section presents tools for managing practice change, will help you assemble qualified teams, and help market green buildings to your clients.

Establishing a Strategic Plan for Design Firms
The essence of strategic planning is in thinking clearly about where to go in the future, committing to a direction with specific goals to achieve it, and developing strategies that will help one succeed in achieving these goals and this direction. Here is an overview on strategic planning to help you get started.

We will be adding more tools and resources to this section soon. In the meantime, check out these two videos on high performance buildings.

High Performance Building: Perspectives and Practice Video
Rocky Mountain Institute and the USGBC have partnered to produce a compelling video that documents the business case for building green. This new documentary profiles more than a dozen LEED projects and features interviews with CEOs, school administrators, government officials, building managers and designers who recognize the real benefits of going green

Banner Bank DVD
In "Green is the Color of Money," Developer Gary Christensen and his team lead viewers through an exploration of the integrated design process for the LEED Platinum Banner Bank building in Boise, Idaho. Showing different stages in Banner's construction, Christensen takes the audience step-by-step through the LEED certification process, analyzing the challenges and then turning them into design opportunities.

Integrated Design Process & Tools

admin — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:28:42 +0000

By implementing a whole building, integrated design approach, the team may be able to realize significant savings in lighting, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems, or in some cases reducing or even eliminating systems. This will allow funds to be invested in mechanical upgrades and/or enhancements to other parts of the building.

There are two aspects of integrated design:

The whole project delivery process, from concept to occupancy, and
the actual design approach used within the early stages of design.

Cost of Green Revisited

admin — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:43:08 +0000

This study by the international cost estimating firm, Davis Langdon, revisits the question of the cost of incorporating sustainable design features into projects. It builds on the work undertaken in the earlier paper "Costing Green: A Comprehensive Cost Database and Budget Methodology," released in 2004, and looks at the developments that have occurred over the past three years, as sustainable design has become more widely accepted and used.

The 2006 study shows essentially the same results as 2004: there is no significant difference in average costs for green buildings as compared to non-green buildings. Many project teams are building green buildings with little or no added cost, and with budgets well within the cost range of non-green buildings with similar programs.

The study also found that, in many areas of the country, the contracting community has embraced sustainable design, and no longer sees sustainable design requirements as additional burdens to be priced in their bids. Data from this study shows that many projects are achieving certification through pursuit of the same lower cost strategies, and that more advanced, or more expensive strategies are often avoided. Most notably, few projects attempt to reach higher levels of energy reduction beyond what is required by local ordinances, or beyond what can be achieved with a minimum of cost impact.

Full report

Standards & Codes

admin — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:07:59 +0000

ASHRAE Standards
Standard 90.1-2004
The purpose of this standard is to provide minimum requirements for the energy-efficient design of buildings except low-rise residential buildings.

Standard 55-2004
The purpose of this standard is to specify the combinations of indoor thermal environmental factors and personal factors that will produce thermal environmental conditions acceptable to a majority of the occupants within the space.

Standard 62.1-2007
The purpose of this standard is to specify minimum ventilation rates and other measures intended to provide indoor air quality that is acceptable to human occupants and that minimizes adverse health effects. This standard is intended for regulatory application to new buildings, additions to existing buildings, and those changes to existing buildings that are identified in the body of the standard. This standard is intended to be used to guide the improvement of indoor air quality in existing buildings.

Proposed Standard 189.1-2
The purpose of this standard is to provide minimum requirements for the design of high-performance, green buildings to:

Balance environmental responsibility, resource efficiency, occupant comfort and well being, and community sensitivity, and
Support the goal of the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Design, Construction and Operation of Green High Performance Healthcare Facilities

LEED Energy and Atmosphere
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. LEED provides building owners and operators with a tool that provides immediate and measureable impact on their buildings' performance. Energy efficiency is covered under the Energy and Atmosphere section of the rating. Additional energy savings (but not points) result from some of the strategies covered under "Sustainable Sites" and "Indoor Environmental Quality".

The Living Building Challenge
The Living Building Challenge, being developed by the Cascadia Chapter of the USGBC, is a performance based standard that aims to challenge all building owners, architects, engineers and design professionals to move beyond LEED Platinum. It is an evolving tool and specific rules on how to document compliance and to seek living building designation will be presented in the document The Living Building User's Guide. The requirements are all based on actual measured outcomes or actual performance - not what a project is proposed to be. There are no optional credits, only prerequisites.

Advanced Buildings Core Performance
The Core Performance Guide outlines a step-by-step simplified approach to achieve predictable energy savings in small- to medium-sized buildings without the need for modeling. The Guide is the new version of Benchmark 1.1, a nationally recognized resource on how to deliver best-in-class energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality in high performance commercial buildings. It is aimed at small to medium sized buildings (under 70,000 square feet) but also has some application in larger more complicated buildings.

Advanced Design Strategies & Technologies

admin — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:09:54 +0000

This section presents selected articles and links to additional tools and resources for energy efficiency strategies and technologies in the following categories:

Integrated Facades

Building Envelope

Integrated Lighting (Efficient Lighting & Daylighting)

Mechanical Systems

Controls

Commissioning

Training Curriculum Excerpts

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:28:08 +0000

Integrated Design Tools

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:28:41 +0000

Snapshots

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:22:11 +0000

What is energy effective design?
Read a Question and Answer Session with William McDonough

Interface Engineering
Integrated design has been growing in popularity partially in response to the trend toward sustainability in the design and construction industry, but also in response to the demand for "functional" high performance buildings.

Technical Support

admin — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:02:08 +0000

BetterBricks Integrated Design Lab Network
Northwest architects and engineers have advisory resources close to home to help them incorporate high performance building practices into their commercial building designs.

Portland State University's Green Building Research Laboratory
The GBRL houses extensive facilities for both fundamental research and applied measurements in support of the green building industry. The GBRL creates and disseminates reports and software for use in green building research and practice. You can check out GBRL equipment for short term measurements or small monitoring projects and GBRL staff can collaborate with you to design, conduct, and analyze experiments or field tests.