High Performance Buildings: Post Occupancy Evaluation
Thursday, January 31, 2008
This meeting will continue the discourse that began at last fall"s inagural meeting, where experts debated how best to measure the progress being made in green buildings. Results of two recent studies will be presented at the meeting - a review of the 100 most energy efficient new buildings in North America and measured energy efficiency of LEED buildings. Additionally, health and productivity issues will be discussed with respect to sustainable buildings.
Exercising its unique position as a neutral third party, the Academy formed a collective—including architects, engineers, scientists, policy makers from city and state, and leaders of foundations and non-profit organizations—representing the key players in New York in the area of green buildings and sustainable design. This newly formed group addresses a unique niche for which the Academy can leverage its scientific strength to deliver significant value to the green buildings discourse. This year's focus will be on addressing energy and measurement issues with respect to sustainable design, including a survey of best practices nationally and internationally.
Moderator: Noel Morrin, Skanska
Agenda
6:00 - 6:05
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Karin Pavese, NYAS and Noel Morrin, Skanska
6:05 - 6:45
Low Carbon Buildings in the U.S. Today
David Hewitt, New Buildings Institute
6:45 - 7:30
Sustainable Buildings for Health and Productivity: Expanding the Definition of High Performance Buildings
Vivian Loftness, Carnegie-Mellon University
7:30 - 7:45
Panel Discussion
Abstracts
Low Carbon Buildings in the U.S. Today
David Hewitt, Executive Director, New Buildings Institute
David will discuss the results of two recent studies by NBI. The first study reviewed the 100 most energy efficient new buildings in North America to determine what strategies are being used, and how widespread low-carbon buildings are today. The second study, completed for the U.S. Green Building Council, measured the energy efficiency of LEED buildings. The two studies have led to increased efforts in integrated technical solutions, measured energy performance, and educational strategies.
Sustainable Buildings for Health and Productivity: Expanding the Definition of High Performance Buildings
Vivian Loftness, FAIA, LEED AP, Carnegie Mellon University
Sustainable design is a collective process whereby the built environment achieves new levels of ecological balance in new and retrofit construction, towards the long-term viability and humanization of architecture. Focusing on environmental context, sustainable design merges the natural, minimum resource conditioning solutions of the past (daylight, solar heat and natural ventilation) with the innovative technologies of the present, into an integrated "intelligent" system that supports individual control with expert negotiation for environmental quality and resource consciousness. Sustainable design rediscovers the social, environmental and technical values of pedestrian, mixed-use communities, fully using existing infrastructures, including "main streets" and small town planning principles, and recapturing indoor-outdoor relationships. Sustainable design avoids the further thinning out of land use, and the dislocated placement of buildings and functions caused by single use zoning.
Sustainable design introduces benign, non-polluting materials and assemblies with lower embodied and operating energy requirements, and higher durability and recyclability. Finally, sustainable design offers architecture of long term value through 'forgiving' and modifiable building systems, through life-cycle instead of least-cost investments, and through timeless delight and craftsmanship".
The importance of proving that sustaina