GreenClips.224 09.24.03 ARE ARCHITECTS RESPONSIBLE FOR NEARLY HALF OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION? Edward Mazria, a veteran of green design, places the blame for global warming and the responsibility for turning things around squarely on the shoulders of one profession: architects. A principal of the architectural practice Mazria Riskin Odems in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Mazria authored the "Passive Solar Energy Book" in the late 1970s. Assessments of US energy consumption have traditionally been broken down into four categories: industry (35 percent), transportation (27 percent), residential (21 percent), and commercial (17 percent). Mazria looks at the numbers differently. By combining the residential and commercial sectors, and then adding the portion of the industry sector that goes to the construction and operation of industrial buildings, he attributes 48 percent of total US energy consumption to the architectural sector. Mazria has come up with a multipronged strategy to use architecture to attack the problem; his approach is design-based rather than emphasizing technological solutions or prescriptive or proscriptive requirements. "Architects who don't want to see this as their problem will try to rationalize why they can't reach these goals -- that it's a client problem, or it's an economic issue..." Mazria says. "But it's simply a design problem -- you can solve a design problem a thousand ways to not cost more. If you're an architect, just like you solve the functional problem and the budgetary problem, you must solve the environmental problem -- and solve it by design." Metropolis, Oct 2003, p 103, by Christopher Hawthorne. [More: http://www.mazria.com ] POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATIONS MAY HELP BOLSTER GREEN CLAIMS Although post-occupancy evaluations (POE) of buildings are rarely undertaken, they can offer valuable lessons about how well the building is serving occupants' needs, as well as information about performance factors such as energy use, water use, or even financial performance. Green and high-performance buildings are particularly good candidates for post-occupancy evaluations, since POEs provide a way to learn about the performance or unexpected side effects of new products, technologies and techniques. "Everyone in the green building field believes that a good integrated design process is important for success," says John Carmody of the University of Minnesota's Center for Sustainable Building Research. "You have to have an ongoing process to keep learning, and POE is just a part of that." POEs may also help to evaluate whether LEED-certified and other green buildings deliver on their promises, and they can provide the hard evidence that green building advocates need to make their case. With information from POEs, suggests Craig Zimring of Georgia Tech, "We can say that if we make a particular design move, energy costs will be reduced, or air quality will go up, or user satisfaction will increase. The evidence moves us away from arguing to do these things because they are the right thing to do, towards investing in things that the client really cares about." Environmental Building News, Sep 2003, p 1, by Nadav Malin. [See EBN issue for list of many POE resources, including Occupant Satisfaction Survey at http://www.cbe.berkeley.edu/RESEARCH/briefs-surveybrochure.htm ] PITTSBURGH'S CONVENTION CENTER ON CUTTING EDGE OF GREEN DESIGN Pittsburgh's new 1.4 million-square-foot David L. Lawrence Convention Center, which has won accolades for Rafael Vinoly's striking design, will likely become the largest building to be certified by the US Green Building Council's LEED rating system. In November, the Convention Center will host the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo. Conference attendees will see close up three sustainable design strategies that local architecture and engineering firm Burt Hill Kosar Rittelmann employed to cut energy consumption 30 percent compared to similar facilities: natural ventilation, natural lighting, and water efficiency. The natural ventilation design will save 3.8 million kWh of energy a year. Strategies include a chimney effect created by the sweeping roof, convection currents from the adjacent Allegheny River, and vents to allow outside air to flow through the building without using fans or other mechanical systems. Clerestory windows and skylights provide daylight for 75 percent of the exhibition space, saving 9.5 million kWh of energy a year. And the Center taps the aquifer that runs beneath downtown, providing makeup water for its cooling towers, reducing demand for water from the city water system. Pulsed-power treatment of the cooling tower water to eliminate bacteria without chemicals further reduces city-water demand. This system saves about 1.8 million gallons of water annually, while the use of recycled water for toilet and urinal flushing saves an estimated 6.4 million gallons annually. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 23 Sept 2003, by David Linamen and Harry Gordon. [Full text: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03266/224884.stm ; about GreenBuild conference: http://www.greenbuildexpo.org ] THROUGH OCTOBER 5 IN PITTSBURGH... "Pittsburgh Platforms: New Projects in Architecture and Environmental Design," is on view through October 5 at the Heinz Architectural Center at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum. Nineteen projects designed for Pittsburgh by local architects, artists, and engineers explore how design can represent a city with a legacy of heavy industry and a new economy. Projects include DGGP architecture's Pittsburgh Glass Center -- a former abandoned car dealership turned environmentally friendly glassmaking studio -- and D.I.R.T.'s Testing the Waters water treatment park, which was revived from a marred mining landscape. Metropolis, Oct 2003, p 160. [More: http://www.cmoa.org ] COSTA RICAN SCHOOL TO OFFER MASTERS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN PROGRAM The Universidad del Diseno, a Costa Rican school of architecture and interior architecture that focuses on sustainable and bioclimatic design, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. The school is in the process of establishing a masters of environmental design program, which should start in early 2005. Alvaro Rojas, AIA, the school's founder and director, says that Costa Rica does a good job of projecting the environment in its many national parks and forest reserves, but its capital city, San Jose, could serve as a poster child for reckless urban sprawl. Addressing the growing problems of traffic congestion, sewage treatment, and sprawl is critical to the future of San Jose, says Rojas. "We need to develop a denser city with a smaller footprint." To open his students' eyes to what is happening around the world, Rojas regularly invites practitioners and academics from the US, Europe and Latin America to serve on juries, give lectures, and participate in conferences. In June, the school hosted the Green Mundaneum 2003, the third in a series of biannual symposia that provided a broad range of perspectives on green design, with speakers including James Wines, Charles Jericks, Michelle Addington, and Rolando Araya. Architectural Record, Sept 2003, p 79, by Clifford A. Pearson. [More: http://www.unidis.ac.cr/ ] SIMULATION SOFTWARE USED TO DESIGN MORE PRECISELY AND EFFICIENTLY The international engineering firm Buro Happold uses building-simulation software to model environmental and human impacts on the exterior and the interior surfaces and spaces of buildings. Computational Simulation and Analysis (CoSA) is their multidisciplinary group of analysis specialists, whose expertise extends from aeronautics to architecture to academia. CoSA's simulation efforts include modeling airflow in and around a building to determine the best locations for openings, modeling the patterns of air within a space to design the most effective heating and ventilating system, and simulating daylighting to reduce the need for artificial lighting. CoSA also uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which allows air distribution within a space to be modeled to reveal drafts and stagnancy, and hot and cold areas. All the software used by Buro Happold -- CFX or Flovent for CFD analysis, Thermal Analysis Software (TAS) for thermal modeling and system simulation, or Building Exodus for evacuation studies -- is commercially available. "In cases where we are helping determine a building's orientation, we use CFD to model building shading and sunlight," says David Stribling, [Buro Happold's simulation specialist]. By integrating simulation analysis, the result is more likely to be an optimum design to reduce energy consumption, take advantage of passive environmental controls, and provide the highest level of human comfort. Architectural Record, Sept 2003, p 165, by Barbara Knecht. [More about CoSA: http://www.burohappold.com -- click on "Building Engineering" under "Explore our Specialisms"] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GreenClips is free of charge thanks to individual members and these sponsors: BUILDINGGREEN, INC. 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