Green Building Design
An overview of what we call "Green", "Sustainable", "High Performance" or "Bioclimatic" buildings and how we are involved in their design process.
The 3 widely accepted legs of the sustainability stool are People,
Planet, and Prosperity.
We believe that correctly balancing decisions over all three areas results in a sustainable solution. This concept is called Triple Bottom Line accounting ; it takes into account environmental and social performance in addition to the economic performance.
Sustainable buildings are energy and resource-efficient, environmentally sound, healthy, comfortable and productive places to live, work, learn, experiment and recreate.
Designing Energy Efficient Buildings
Sustainable and energy efficient concepts aim for the reduction of plant systems and their energy consumption from the operation of a building (heating, air-conditioning, cooling, lighting, etc.).
This ecological and economical senseful aim can be obtained by optimizing the use of the environmental forces (daylight, ambient air, sun, etc.).
As a consequence, the design team is facing the "planning" of very dynamic parameters like daylight, natural ventilation, thermal masses, night ventilation, solar heat gain, etc.
Due to their extremely dynamic behaviour and the interactions among themselves these time-varying parameters need sophisticated design tools.
Different simulation environments are necessary for an estimation or design of these "soft" components of a sustainable building climate concept.
Green Building Rating Systems
Typically, such buildings are measured against "code" buildings, in other words, structures that qualify for a building permit, but don't go beyond the minimum requirements. Green buildings have to score some minimum number of points above the "code" threshold to qualify for a "green" or "certified" or "high-performance" rating.
These buildings are measured according to a building environmental assessment tool such as:
- LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), green building rating system of the U.S. Green Building Council.
- BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Assessment Method) measurement rating for green buildings that was established in the UK by the BRE.
- HQE (High Quality Environmental standard) the standard for green building in France. The standard is controlled by the Paris based 'Association pour la Haute Qualité Environnementale' (ASSOHQE).
- Estidama began three years ago and is the first program of its kind that is tailored to the Middle East region. The Urban Planning Council (UPC) is making significant strides to influence projects under design, development or construction within the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
- GDAS is the Chinese standard for green buildings or energy efficiency for buildings, it is developed by China Green Building Network.
- GBI (Green Building Index) is designed specifically for the tropical climate and Malaysia's current social, infrastructure and economic development.
- many more building environmental assessment tools exist, in some cases they are based on local utility or city guidelines.
Each of these rating systems are developed to promote environmentally responsible design and construction as well as transform the built environment and marketplace as we traditionally understand it.
Integrated Design Process
Building evaluation systems encourage an "integrated design process", in which the building engineers are brought into the design process with the architectural team at an early stage, often during programming and conceptual design.
Integrated design explores, for example, building orientation, massing and materials choices as critical issues in energy use and indoor air quality, and attempts to influence these decisions before the basic architectural design is fully developed.
Financial Benefits of Green Buildings
This is a non-exhaustive list of economics advantages that sustainable buildings offer:
- Enhanced asset value and profits. Sustainable buildings are the most competitive products in the marketplace.
- Operating costs: Incorporating the principles of passive design significantly reduces utilities bills. Lighting and HVACs (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) energy consumptions are significantly decreased.
- Equipments required to control temperatures within the building are smaller. This saves space allocated for plant rooms, pipes, etc.. and allows more usable space.
- Reduced power consumption makes the building easier to power with renewable energies. Installation cost of renewable systems is lower compared to a conventional building of same size.
- Reduced maintenance costs and greater occupant comfort.
- Improvements on energy consumption cut down greenhouse gas emissions. Governments now propose various incentives for these green developments.
- In the case of offices and schools, employee and students productivity/satisfaction are improved.
- Environmental stewardship: Sustainable projects provide an opportunity to showcase low energy technologies and passive building design to the local community.
Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems, we split the possibilities to make good building art.
- Alvar Alto
Creative Energy Engineering.Co, Ltd :: Design by 