The team selected an urban site in midtown St. Louis, Mo. They chose this site because the city has a distinct four-season climate, electricity costs in Missouri are among the country’s lowest, and more than 80 percent of the state’s electricity is generated by coal-fired plants—so the power is cheap and dirty. The 170,735-sq.-ft., Net Zero Co2urt, is a new prototype for a reasonably priced, readily constructible, and marketable zero carbon emissions office buildings.

Carbon neutral designs always will be location-specific but there are some similarities to the NW with this example (low electricity rates) so this is worth a read. There are also few examples of net zero buildings out there, especially of large buildings. Like the hospital “Targeting 100” prototype developed with NBBJ, the Puget Sound Integrated Design Lab and NEEA’s BetterBricks is currently developing a similar office prototype for the Pacific Northwest. So stay tuned to see an example of how we can achieve net zero in the Northwest!

This is the second of two interviews with the authors of the Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings (MEEB) Alison Kwok, Professor of Architecture, University of Oregon, and Walter Grondzik, Professor of Architecture, Ball State University. In this part the discussion includes another text book, The Green Studio Handbook. Part 1 can be found at here.

As MEEB has evolved from one edition to the next, many passive design and high performance strategies have been incorporated. But it has been a challenge to effectively present how an integrated design approach can lever individual strategies to greatly increase building performance. For example, Alison Kwok pointed out that “Chapter 8 in MEEB 11, Designing for Heating and Cooling is a really important chapter. Passive cooling and solar heating and nighttime ventilation of thermal mass and daylighting, are all in that chapter. It’s a big, complicated chapter with interrelated issues like: with more daylighting, there’s more heat gain from the larger apertures during the cooling season.” It’s very difficult to convey a process that effectively weighs trade-offs and that helps prioritize strategies.

The authors have carefully considered their approach to complex integrated systems.

According to Walter, “An analogy might be made to learning anatomy. Is it best to learn anatomy by never talking about constituent parts? We’re not going to talk about blood, we’re not going to talk about bones, we’re just going to look at the whole human being because that’s what we want to end up with anyway? Or is it more rational to start building on various subsystems and then at some point you go, ‘Voila! Now I understand the whole package?’

“I guess our philosophy as we begin thinking about MEEB 12, especially from a student point of view, is that it might be better to talk about direct gain passive solar heating as an increment and then talk about daylighting as an increment and then once someone understands those say, ‘Now, they do have to work together; they can’t be independent. And you understand A and you understand B so now you can definitely do some integration.’”

Rather than waiting for MEEB 12 for further elucidation, those looking for more immediate green design support can turn to another book that directly addresses the integration process. Grondzik and Kwok are also the co-authors of The Green Studio Handbook: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design, a manual that focuses upon application of green strategies early in the design process.

“While we were working on MEEB, I had a summer school class here in Eugene and Walter came and was part of it”, Allison adds.  “I had taught a green studio the spring before, in 2005. There were many questions in the studio. I couldn’t answer them all. ‘How do we size a green roof? How do we know how thick this green roof should be? What kind of plants are needed and how much water should be retained, what about heat island effects?’ The students wanted to do a green roof on a railroad site in West Eugene and because they wanted to refurbish the eco-habitat. They also wanted to utilize stack and cross ventilation, and other green strategies.

“We polled some students from that class and conducted a focus group and asked, ‘What would be really useful for you?’ The responses were quite informative. ‘Well, some of our ideas are really just a blank sheet of paper, we don’t even know where to start. We need some guidance on what’s going to help us validate our decisions. How do we know how large an opening should be in order for cross-ventilation to be viable? We’ve all had basic courses such as ECS (Environmental Control Systems), but how can we actually use this information in our design studio?’

“Walter and I came up with the idea to try document 50 design strategies (although when it comes to what number to select, the sky’s the limit). We drafted some strategies that summer, but it was very rough. We also decided to include case studies to show how all these strategies come together, how design is integrated, how you can’t just do one strategy without considering others, and how to begin thinking holistically about a site and its resources.  We have a lot of case study work, so it was a natural to include them. We had just finished MEEB 10 in December of 2005 and wrote The Green Studio Handbook from January through April 2006.”

The resulting book presents 40 strategies and nine case studies. The strategies are grouped into a number of categories: envelope, lighting, heating, cooling, energy production, water, and waste. Each strategy is supported with a brief description of principles and concepts, step-by-step approaches, annotated tables, references to international standards, rating systems and guidelines, and internet sources. The case studies have been selected to showcase strategies in context. The book has been designed to serve as a handy companion for students and practitioners during schematic design. Strategies that are carried forward into design development may be supported in more depth by reference to MEEB.

Students participating in green studios taught by Kwok have also had the opportunity to collaborate with the authors. Alison again, “We encourage students to bring forward images and ideas. In the formulation and production of the book itself, we hire students to assist with drawings and researching background information. One of our intentions of the book is for students to understand the synthetic nature of a drawing, that speaks visually without having to read extensive text to understand the concept.”

As high performance buildings and green design become mainstream, practitioners are being challenged to broaden their understanding, to encompass many elements of both architecture and engineering. Hard lines between these disciplines are being softened and even eliminated. Both Mechanical and Electrical Equipment in Buildings and The Green Studio Handbook are valuable tools that provide students and practitioners with rapid access to strategies, case studies, and technical resources to support high performance and sustainable building designs.

Additional information about MEEB can be found HERE.

Find more about The Green Studio Handbook HERE.

A 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. A newly constructed, code-compliant hospital in the Northwest following the process and employing strategies identified in the research can expect to save around $730,000 a year.  Savings in other areas can be higher where utility prices are higher. All sectors of the medical industry are tackling issues of sustainability as providers continue to be asked to do more with less and lighten their impact on the environment.  This work represents one of the latest contributions to the ongoing push to green America’s hospitals and build healthier communities. 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. These strategies include heat recovery, daylighting, and thermal energy storage, which when integrated at the very beginning, can reduce up to 60 percent of a new hospital’s energy use. This approach resulted in a full hospital prototype that has been modeled for energy use as well as cost of construction and can be implemented for less than three percent of the total project’s cost, an incremental cost that is expected to be recouped through energy savings and utility incentives within the first five-to-eight years of a building’s life depending on local utility costs.

The study was presented at the CleanMed Conference in Baltimore on May 11, 2010. To read an executive summary of Targeting 100! click HERE. To request a copy of the full report, click HERE. For Energy in Healthcare Fact Sheet, click HERE.

The study, titled, “Targeting 100! Envisioning the high performance hospital: implications for a new, low energy, high performance prototype,” is the result of the close collaboration of the University of Washington’s Integrated Design Lab and NBBJ, one of the nation’s leading healthcare architectural firms. The study was primarily funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) through its BetterBricks initiative, with significant in-kind time commitment by NBBJ and others on the research team including engineers, general contractors, utilities, hospital CEOs and facilities managers.

Previous research conducted by the UW’s IDL of Scandinavian hospitals showed that a hospital can achieve an Energy Use Index (EUI) of 100 and still provide patients and staff with an exceptional work and healing environment. An Energy Use Index, or 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.  The EUI value for a building is used in a similar manner as MPG is used to describe the efficiency of an automobile.

This study shows that hospitals in the U.S. can also aim for an EUI of 100 and achieve similar successful outcomes while fully complying with codes. To put this in perspective, the EUI of an average Northwest hospital is 270 KBtu/sq.ft.yr.