Friday morning was my last workshop on Performance metrics. Several institutions with resources (money) to study the performance of their new green buildings, have gone to a lot of trouble to actually do it.
Here’s a string of notes from the speakers:
Muscoe Martin, M2 Architecture;
Carbon footprint is only one measurement of sustainability, don’t forget water usage.
What does your building weigh? Less stuff is lighter and more sustainable. BT, a typical house weighs 50-60 lb./sq. ft.
Ihab Elzeyadi, Ph.D, Univ. of Oregon:
People are the missing element in the LEED measurement matrix.
The Pantheon is the ultimate sustainable building. (think about it)
The U of Oregon studied people and how they responded to a new LEED building. They found the following; Individual control is very important; 85% without controls, had electric space heaters; occupants can be very tolerant of their environment if they take pride in their “green” building. (It’s the “buy in” factor); Green buildings can be agents of change; interactive websites are the best way to learn about building performance (the audience was college students). But the point is that public access to building performance is important.
Rick Mattila, Genzyme Corp., Director of Environmental Systems, spoke about their new LEED Platinum office building in Cambridge, Mass. $140 million, 350,000 sq. ft. 12 stories. (This building has it all) Again, they performed detailed analysis of building performance, as perceived by the occupants, as well as numerical performance measurements. (BTW Genzyme has a virtual tour on their website www.genzyme.com) Using conservative increased employee performance measurements, the company gains $5 million each year. And that’s just the improved employee performance, not the energy savings. (This building is on the cover of the book that we just purchased, Sustainable Design)
Here are some photos from the afternoon outings to Macy’s (the former Marshall Fields) and Northwestern University.
See you all Monday (except Tenaya)
Anybody see this thing anymore?
By: amy on February 18, 2009
at 12:18 am