Sustainable Vision

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Keepin it real in Malta for the next 10 days. I'll be spending my time here learning about sustainable design and green renovation practices. #stoked (at Malta Valleta)

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Project 3: Net-Zero Boston

Introduction to Sustainable Design - Boston Architectural College, BDS

Fall 2014

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Codes, Standards + Rating Systems

Today, the world’s current energy codes come with a much modernized approach to building envelopes and our infrastructure simply wasn't designed with these new practices in mind. The new emerging codes that regulate energy-use enforce characteristics that limit the capability to achieve more significant energy savings in buildings without major renovations involved. Current energy code strategies only address the very superficial factors that impact building performance.

New codes that consider new elements of building design and construction need to be established, our current practices influence the building performance and don’t address how buildings use energy once completed. Only then will we be able to look at the whole design process as part of a sustainable practice.

Moving to an outcome-based code strategy will allow us to judge building performance with its actual energy use. As we move towards our inevitable future, our construction regulations and guidelines will keep on improving, thus will the rate of conformity. These new disclosure laws will gain more influence and will add new criteria to renting and buying arrangements; ultimately improving operational practices and tenant behavior being highly cost effective.

Mixed-use development is a type of development that combines two or more different land uses, such as residential, commercial, entertainment, etc.

In the beginning of the 20th century, cities started spreading around the world, residential neighborhood started growing in the urban areas and the suburbs; thus raising the necessity of using cars to commute around. Mixed-use development works to create better connected communities, having amenities like restaurants, schools, cultural facilities, services, parks, and more. Cionnecting people to all these services so near reduces the need for people to get private vehicles, therefore increasing the viability of walking around, using bicycles and the public transportation available.

For example, Mexico City’s longest street, Avenida Insurgentes, is the center avenue which includes a range of services and businesses; but traffic congestion was inevitable and made street access very difficult. For these reasons, the city chose Avenida Insurgentes as an opportunity to build the city’s first rapid bus transit system, “Metrobús”. After the successful launch of the program, daily car trips were replaced by a much more sustainable transportation option.

Metrobús in Mexico City's Avenida Insurgentes

Week 12 - Blog Post

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Project 2 - NET-ZERO BOSTON: Site Analysis

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Green Building Performance

Sustainable Design Supports Occupant Satisfaction

Sustainable design isn’t always about the elimination of negative environmental impact through different practices and design methods, but also about maximizing the occupants comfort, satisfaction and about connecting people with their natural environment to some extent. These ideals are very important for many reasons, but if you were to look at it from practical terms, the most important reason is that comfort and satisfaction is directly related with personal and team performance. The better the environment inside, the higher the productivity.

There are plenty of ways to improve the comfort and satisfaction of the people working in a space, but the best way is to work directly to the things that affect the people’s senses. One example would be to put special focus on the lighting involved in the spaces where people spend a long period of time inside the building, introducing daylighting gives the people inside a connection to the outside world. Another great method of improving the mood of the environment would be making good acoustic characteristics to give the rooms a good noise environment where people don’t spend most of their energy speaking louder than they have to or hearing other people talk over them.

Setting and Achieving Goals for Deep Efficiency Buildings

ZNE projects and carbon neutrality goals have emerged into our modern era as defining ideas for achieving building energy efficiency, for this reason, there is a new and growing interest in new methods of the actual measured energy performance of buildings.

The traditional approach for goal setting on new projects would normally focus on using a certain amount less of energy than the recognized national standard. This approach has two main limitations, the first one being that these codes only apply for a fraction of the actual energy-using systems in the building. Second, the model is just as good as the assumptions about operating conditions and practices.

Establishing the model to project the actual performance of the building might be the single most essential step during the entire design process. However, the successful modeling of the project is limited on the skills of the designers putting together the data available. 

Week 8 - Blog Post

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Embodied Energy

Embodied energy is the total sum of all the energy required to produce any products of services, considered as if the energy was used or “embodied” in the product itself. Initial embodied energy refers to the energy used for the gathering of materials, transportation, processing, manufacturing and construction. Once the product is formed, recurring embodied energy represents the energy used to maintain the product’s life-cycle.

In the design aspect of our built environment, designers ought to be concerned about this figures since they must be taken into account for their projects to reach their full potential. When sustainability is the main driving force during the design process, designers need this additional knowledge for making the right kind of decisions about what kind of materials they’re using and how they’re using them; giving thought to all this will help designers extend the life of a building and also ensure the environmental value of the built environment.

Naturally, this lead designers into taking more material-conscious decisions, which in turn is making a greater demand on the market for healthier building products; in response to this new phenomenon now there is a whole new industry sector responding with better assessment tools for materials. These efforts are mainly represented by a collaboration among individuals in groups concerned about the sustainability of our environment and the disclosure of the materials the building products we use are made with.  

In some cases, the ingredients used to make the building materials are different chemical compounds processed in some research facility. Even if building professionals, or even most people for that matter, aren’t really trained with the time and expertise to process that kind of data, it’s still important that that type of information is still available for the public since we can still have experts interpret that information for us with more understandable and simpler means.

Week 5 - Blog post

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Storm-water Management Practices

Boston, the capital city of Massachusetts, is a place that is characterized by its neighborhoods that still hold strong to their colonial roots. Most neighborhoods began as cities of their own before they were incorporated into one. Thus, leaving many streets that may have a duplicate in other parts of town. Boston’s Back Bay, sitting just at the edge of the Charles River and on the southwest side of the downtown area, features some of the most expensive properties in Boston; filled with mansions, shops, restaurants and lots of activity. At one point in history, this was a symbol of wealth and a high social standing to live in that area. Today we see the combination of both residents, tourists and students that constantly go through its streets.

In the specific case of the Back Bay area which is located right next to the Charles River, a successful process of storm water management is crucial to the buildings occupying its space. If the structures that are being made don’t have a proper water filtration systems that let the water find its way back to the river, the water level is going to lower, therefore exposing the wood foundation of the bay. Letting the wood foundation of have contact with air is very dangerous since it will make it vulnerable to rotting and the stilts that support the buildings will start to decay, making it a very dangerous situation.

 The Boston Architectural College’s Green Alley project demonstrates that environmental challenges facing the City of Boston can be fixed through partnerships between experts and institutions. Through collaboration, the school has taken the first step to bring forward the college’s urban sustainability initiative. Permeable paving over the alley is allowing water to flow downward into the earth below rather than via a conventional storm sewer; these systems are designed to collect, store and drain water from the alley surfaces and the two BAC rooftops around the alley. The long term vision for the Green Alley effort includes the use of the geothermal system to satisfy the College’s energy demands and ultimately lead the BAC towards a net zero campus energy goal.

Diagrams courtesy of: www.the-bac.edu

Week 2 - Blog Post

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Energy and Water use as part of the Design Process

Today's business, institutional and modern offices are confronting a lot of pressure to work all the more cost-successfully. Building operators across the nation are turning to better and more advanced metering solutions in order to obtain the type of energy data that the master meter at the main service facility cannot provide; in some cases these very exact figures are vital for the correct functioning of the system. Hence, automatic meter reading systems are picking up popularity for a very effective management energy and water demand and consumption, and in addition diagnosing possibly serious issues before they happen.

Building's vitality and water use make up the two biggest types of assets consumed by a building envelope. When vitality and water checking is contributed at the start of the design process it spares valuable time for the architect and the client.

Submeters have turned out to be viable devices for observing, diagnosing and counteracting primary concerns affecting issues connected with the office's energy envelope. At the point when joined with computing softwares, submeters give knowledge on a building's stream and consumption of power. In today's increasingly cost-conscious commercial environment, acquiring such information is more critical than at any other time.

Designing spaces and places in the construction environment with energy and water efficiency as a main priority takes a great deal of technical understanding of science and engineering, no matter what you are doing, the physics of the materials you choose to use define the permeability of the spaces and the need for supplemental systems; these can include mechanical or passive heating, cooling, air circulation or lighting. Taking all these aspects into account, a new more holistic and collaborative approach to design processes will be essential as energy and water operations costs rise through time.

It take a lot of energy to convey and treat the water we use every day. The water use involved in a project is present all throughout it; during the process of development and also during the occupancy too. Heating water for bating, shaving, cooking and cleaning also requires a lot of energy. With environmental change concerns, dry seasons, and high energy costs, it is of crucial importance we start putting just as much importance in water as we do in energy during the design process. 

Week 3 - Blog Post

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Maison Ozenfant, Le Corbusier

Week 6 - Blog Post

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*All pictures courtesy of: http//snohetta.com/

Site Project 1 - Case Study 

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Zero Net Energy (ZNE) Buildings

ZNE buildings are buildings with zero net energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy consumed in an annual basis is practically equal to the amount of renewed energy created on site.

The development of these type of buildings became possible not only thanks to the drastic advances in sustainable technology and techniques, but also through academic research. Which is able to collect precise energy performance data from traditional or experimental buildings, which then can be used to test the efficacy of the designs.

The pursuit of these kind of developments in buildings envelopes demands early design process and ongoing integrated surveillance operations to make sure everything is on check. The use of passive energy strategies such as increased insulation, natural and night flush ventilation, day-lighting, exterior window shading and operable windows not only help greatly with keeping a low budget very efficiently but also require little maintenance.

Trying to achieve ZNE performance requires a very careful design operation from the start and also using the right techniques with the right technology, in the right way, but that’s only the beginning. When this field is combined with other fields such as Engineering, it’s very fascinating the different approaches they take to the same design process; looking at the project from different angles helped engineering firms find different solutions like: radiant heating and cooling, chilled beams, variable volume refrigerant systems and dedicated outside-air ventilation to produce significant energy benefits.

The thing about this kind of projects is that for them to be completed, the part of collection and sharing of energy performance data is critical to the success of a truly ZNE building. Feedback, continuous attention to building controls and performance monitoring are fundamental parts in most projects.

When we start to think of the project as a whole, we see that the technical aspects such as the techniques and technologies that make the structure possible are only the half of it when you think of the human interaction part. The role of the occupants becomes very important since their daily activities influence the energy use significantly in things like plug loads, schedules and the kind of equipment used.

Zero net buildings have pulled the attention of leading design firms, companies and governments by using a variety of techniques that compose a building that is energy efficient in plenty of ways. ZNE buildings are slowly becoming a probable future, and I think it’s just a matter of time until it becomes a widely used design process around the world, because it just makes sense.

David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Los Altos, California

Courtesy: Jeremy Bitterman

Week 4 - Blog Post