NEEA’s BetterBricks was happy to be a major sponsor this program. This year the focus was on energy performance and water performance. For the first time, all projects were required to provide an energy consumption measure, the energy Use Index or EUI, which seems small but, in fact, is a huge step to getting all entrants to think about energy performance. In addition, the only other mandatory requirement was to describe the project team’s integrated design approach, a key process to achieve high performance buildings.

I’ll get to the award winners in a minute. First I want to share what I find stimulating about the awards process itself. To start, the jury consisted of leading sustainability experts, and not just architects. People like Bob Berkebile FAIA, Founding Principal, BNIM Architects and co-founder of COTE nationally, Don Horn AIA, Assistant Director, GSA Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, Claire Johnson, Associate Director, Atelier Ten, San Francisco, and ALEX STEFFEN, Executive Editor, Worldchanging.  The jury was moderated by Nadav Malin, President, BuildingGreen, Executive Editor, GreenSource.

The Awards process began with the submittals but led to a public jury panel discussion that was videotaped for later posting on the AIA website, followed by a public jury interview of the finalist teams. Then the 11 finalist projects were printed on panels for public display and eventual shipment for display around the region, further extending the impact of the lessons generated by these projects. The Awards ceremony allowed a public discussion with the winning project teams and in the near future there will be a set of case studies and a small booklet and an issue of Seattle AIA Forum magazine describing the projects. So if you missed the other public opportunities you still have many options for viewing the projects. Web images and descriptions of these and all submitted projects can be found at http://wmig.aiaseattle.org/2010_gallery.

Finalists and Winners

Now for what you’ve been waiting for. The jury selected two Gold-level projects, one Silver, and two Honorable Mentions — one for Rural Housing and one for Cultural Sensitivity.

GOLD
King Street Station Rehabilitation, Seattle WA
ZGF Architects
Collaborators:  SMEP Engineer: ARUP; LEED Certification: Green Building Services, Inc.; Commissioning Agent: Keithly Barber Associates

Photo Credit: Seattle Department of Transportation; Museum of   History & Industry
_________________________________________________________________________

GOLD
Vancouver Convention Centre West, Vancouver Canada
Design Architect: LMN Architects. (Prime Architects: Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership & DA Architects & Planners)
Collaborators: Mechanical Engineer: Stantec Consulting; Commissioning Authority and Mechanical Commissioning Agent: KD Engineering Co.

Photo Credit:  LMN/Studio 216
_________________________________________________________________________

SILVER
Twelve | West
ZGF Architects
Collborators:  Gerding Edlen Development Company LLC ; Total Mechanical – M/E/P Engineers, Lighting Design

Photo Credit:  Timothy Hursley,  ZGF Architects LLP
_________________________________________________________________________

Honorable Mention for Rural Affordable Housing
Common Ground, A Co-op Neighborhood
Mithun
Collaborators: Lopez Community Land Trust.

Photo Credit:  Mithun, Juan Hernandez
_________________________________________________________________________

Honorable Mention for Cultural Sustainability
Northwest Maritime Center
The Miller|Hull Partnership
Collaborators:  Mechanical Engineering: Ecotope, Inc; Sustainability: O’Brien and Company

Photo Credit:  Nic Lehoux
_________________________________________________________________________

During the awards ceremony, there was an open Q&A session with project team members and the audience. Below are some of the interesting ideas from NEEA’s BetterBricks’ point of view:

- Integrated design proved to be a key process to attain high performance.

- Thermal comfort expectations can and should vary by seasons, by use and by zone.

- Green BIM tool advances are really helping.

- District-level awareness and connections are key to advanced sustainability.

- It is important to explore all the energy options early and seeing where they might work or even influence the design scheme.

- Some new products were developed or introduced into the US via some of the projects thus making it easier for future projects to take advantage of.

- It was essential to either have a client that was interested and even aggressively pushing the energy and sustainability goals or have the architect effectively convince the client of the importance.
So go check out the detailed project information at the Seattle AIA website, and look for the video trailer http://wmig.aiaseattle.org/2010_gallery.

“Like buildings, icebergs come in all shapes and sizes. They can be beautiful and also a little mysterious. On average, only about 12 percent of an iceberg’s volume sits above the water line. What’s visible is quite small compared to the whole. This is not a bad analogy for how design is often perceived. Architects tend to focus most on form and aesthetics — what you see is what you get. But a building is so much more than that. It’s impossible to tell just by looking at a building what it cost to construct or how much it takes to operate or how efficient it might be in terms of space utilization.”

Read the full post HERE

The fifth annual Puget Sound BetterBricks Awards wrapped up a few weeks and ushered in a new batch green building overachievers.  The aim of these Awards are to both recognize energy efficiency achievements in commercial buildings as well as inspire others to embrace high performance buildings.

This year’s Award winners and finalists were honored at a reception of  nearly 200 people the evening of the 25th at Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park.  The award winners and finalists are listed below.  For more information, visit www.BetterBricks.com/Awards, read the press release or download Seattle Business Magazine’s special report.

Owner/Developer

Those who make decisions about strategic direction regarding investments in high performance buildings. These executives, developers, owners and managers support, authorize and generally enable high performance building to be built and operated.

Winner — Kevin Brown, Senior Vice President & Chief Administrative Officer, Swedish Medical Center

Architecture

Those who design buildings and lead the design team on projects that consistently achieve high levels of energy efficiency in both new construction and major renovations.

Winner — Margaret Montgomery, Principal, NBBJ

Finalists — Chris Flint Chatto, Sustainable Designer, ZGF Architects

Design Engineer

Those who design buildings and lead the design team on projects that consistently achieve high levels of energy efficiency in both new construction and major renovations.

Winner — Tom Marseille, Principal, Stantec Consulting Services, Inc.

Finalist — Peter Alspach, Associate, Arup

Facility Manager / Building Operations

Open to a team or an individual who operates and manages the facilities of a building including facility directors, managers and building operators.

Winner — Unico Properties Energy Management Team: Clarence Clipper, Brett Philips and  Mike Bedsworth, Unico Properties

Finalists — Mike Anderson, Buildings & Grounds Manager, Bellingham School District; Earl Wayman, Senior Property Manager, GVA Kidder Matthews

Service Provider

Those individuals who provide services to the efficient operations of commercial buildings including mechanical contractors, control companies, equipment manufacturers and commissioning agents.

Winner — Danny Miller, Managing Principal, Performance Mechanical Group

Advocate

Those who advocate for and support the design and operation of high performance buildings including consultants, government, non-profit, educators, and others.

Winner — A-P Hurd, Vice President, Touchstone Corporation

Multi-Disciplinary Team

A team of professionals for integrated design on a specific high performance building project or projects that includes three or more of the following professionals: an owner/developer representative, architect, engineer (mechanical, electrical, structural), consultants, and building contractor (if involved during design).

Winner — NetRiver Phase II Expansion Team: Paul Harris & Adam Vierra, NetRiver; Dave Mackenzie, Design Real Estate; Neil Bavins & Al Thompson, Puget Sound Refrigeration; Randy Valerio, D. Hittle & Associates; Todd Brunner, Brunner Construction.

Three years of hard work, characterized by widespread building industry collaboration, has resulted in the first comprehensive U.S. commercial green building standard accredited by the American National Standard Institute (ANSI) and intended for adoption into local codes. The Standard may also be used by utility programs and green building rating systems prior to code adoption.

On January 22, 2010, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), with the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), published Standard 189.1, Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, a compilation of criteria that must be met in order to be considered a “green” building. These criteria include the same topic areas found in most green building rating systems: site, water use, energy, indoor environment, and building impact on atmosphere, materials, and resources.

As a standard, minimum performance levels, for all criteria, must be achieved. Standard 189.1 includes an energy efficiency goal to achieve a minimum 30 percent reduction in energy cost over that in ANSI/ASHRAE/ANSI Standard 90.1-2007 (the current version). Energy Efficiency, Section 7 of Standard 189.1, addresses seven major categories: envelope requirements, on-site renewable energy systems, mechanical equipment efficiencies, ventilation, energy consumption data collection, peak load control, and lighting.

• Envelope requirements are built upon those in 90.1-2007, with fenestration orientation requirements to reduce solar gain from the east and west in specific climate zones, and with an added requirement for a continuous air barrier to reduce air leakage.
• The standard requires building design to facilitate future installation of onsite renewable energy systems. A prescriptive path option requires renewable system installation at the time of construction. (Both of these options provide an exception if the building is in a location with poor incident solar radiation).
• Minimum mechanical equipment efficiencies are set assuming integration with on-site renewable energy production. If mechanical equipment efficiencies are increased to meet ENERGY STAR or other more stringent requirements, then renewable energy requirements are reduced.
• Demand control ventilation is required for densely occupied spaces and fan power is limited to 10 percent below the limitations specified in Standard 90.1.
• Daily energy consumption data, including hourly use profiles, must be collected and retained for at least three years. Depending upon project energy use, there are additional thresholds that require data collection and storage for various energy subsystems.
• Demand limiting or load shifting capabilities are required to reduce peak electric demand by at least 10 percent.

Complete information on the standard, including a readable on-line copy, may be found at www.ashrae.org/greenstandard.

LEED, 2030 Challenge, and many utility and incentive programs, emphasize a relative approach, even though code baselines are moving targets: codes will evolve over time – what code applied and during what year and what jurisdiction?. .

Building performance is also regularly discussed in absolute terms: applying an energy use index (EUI) in units such as kBTUs/sf-yr (thousands of British thermal units, per square foot, per year). Once these absolute units are known you have a great metric that can also be used to determine relative performance and conversely add meaning to the energy units

Having the energy consumption data to consider building performance in absolute units is essential, but once you have that information, it really becomes meaningful when you apply it in relative terms, to any baseline building that you wish: the last, best building that you designed; or your chief competitor’s best building; or the regional average for buildings of the same type; or the best European building that you have read about. Don’t be constrained by a baseline defined by one program or another. Once you target, in absolute terms, the energy performance that you believe you can achieve, you can compare it to any alternative that is meaningful to you or your client.

Some programs, such as LEED and certain utility and incentive programs, define energy savings as the difference between the energy use calculated by two energy simulation models, one a baseline building that meets a particular standard and the other the building as designed. The models may provide a superb engineering calculation of performance, given a certain set of design and operating assumptions, but don’t even think of this comparison as a predictor of actual energy performance. That just isn’t an appropriate use of a design tool that has limited application. No matter how carefully a model is constructed, assumptions made during design, and changes during construction, will result in a different reality.

Energy performance comparisons are the most meaningful when using the performance data for actual buildings. Setting performance targets makes a lot more sense when based on an understanding of the energy consumed in comparable buildings. Start collecting performance data from your firm’s projects. You may be surprised by which projects are performing well and which have significant room for improvement. Review case studies that provide actual performance data (not just the energy consumption modeled during design) about similar buildings. And, since no two buildings are identical and even similar buildings will have design and operating characteristics that will cause energy performance to vary, develop an understanding about the average performance of a particular building type in your region. This is likely to be your most useful baseline.

There are a number of sources for data about the average performance and characteristics of existing buildings. The U.S Department of Energy with the Energy Information Administration conducts the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS)  every four years, publishes reports and summaries of commercial energy use and costs based on the survey, and also makes raw survey data available in a variety of electronic formats. Much of the CBECS data is excerpted and combined with other energy use data and published each year by the Energy Information Administration as the Buildings Energy Data Book. CBECS data is also the basis for the Architecture 2030 Challenge, and EnergyStar Target Finder and Portfolio Manager, so it is always worth review.

The State of California has an extremely useful data set called Commercial End Use Survey (CEUS) that considers the floor stocks, electric and natural gas consumption, energy use indexes, and hourly use load profiles for twelve commercial building types.

In the Northwest, NEEA has published an Assessment of the Commercial Building Stock in the Northwest , which was recently updated <Baseline Characteristics of the 2002-2004 Nonresidential Sector: Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.

Each of these data sets will be useful resources over time. An excellent introduction to this topic, yet with enough depth to really help you negotiate among various rating systems, and energy and sustainability program requirements, is Charles Eley’s presentation Some Thoughts About Percent Savings Calculations and Rating Scales for Nonresidential Buildings, which can be viewed here.  It will take about 40 minutes of your time, but it will be time well spent

BetterBricks is a regular sponsor of Cascadia’s Transformational Lecture Series (TLS) – an ongoing speaking circuit that invites some of the most accomplished figures in the world of green building to share their insights, wisdom and experience with those in the industry. In addition to funding the series, BetterBricks conducts interviews with some the speakers (see our recent post: an Interview with Guy Battle).

Last year, we had the opportunity to interview TLS speaker Patrick Bellew prior to his visit to the Northwest.  Patrick is the founding director of U.K. based Atelier Ten and is a Chartered Building Services Engineer with more than twenty years’ experience in the design of high performance buildings and their systems.   The following is an excerpt from our interview with Patrick – the full interview can be read here.

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: 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 over many 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.

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.

An unfortunate truth is that buildings consume a huge amount of energy – 48% of all that we use in the United States. Commercial buildings account for 18%. We all know that’s too much. Our mantra: reduce energy use in new commercial buildings through an integrated design approach. We also encourage owners and design teams to set energy performance targets; use commissioning and training to ensure an effective hand-off to occupants; and measure actual performance and make adjustments as needed to get to the targets set at the beginning.

Core contributors to this Blog are BetterBricks staff members and leading building professionals whose work and vision are at the forefront of the changing landscape of sustainable architecture. We encourage you to be a part of the conversation: leave a comment, forward to a colleague, contact a contributor or volunteer to write an article or two.

Rethink Energy and Design is brought to you by BetterBricks, the commercial building initiative of the non-profit Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, which is supported by local electric utilities across the Northwest. Through the BetterBricks initiative, NEEA advocates for changes to energy-related business practices in Northwest buildings. In this era of heightened appreciation for the impact climate change is having on our environment and our economy, energy efficiency is a crucial component in addressing these issues. On BetterBricks.com, you’ll find the information, tools, training and resources to help your building make a difference to your bottom line and the environment.