We at Climatic Design LLC (CDL) believe architects have the most significant role in creation of our built environment. Ten critical decisions that a design team makes on a project:

• location of a building on a site
• building massing and geometry
• building orientation
• size of fenestration
• location of fenestration
• shading devices
• thermal properties of the building envelope
• natural ventilation
• daylighting
• HVAC system selection

all have direct impact to the energy consumption of the building. These decisions are usually associated with human impacts on the environment. The building sector alone accounts for 30-40 percent of global energy use and over 80 percent of the environmentally harmful emissions from buildings are due to energy consumption during the times when the buildings are in use.

The above-mentioned design decisions are only possible if are considered at the beginning of the design process. However, at the beginning stage of design, usually there is not enough time and available resources to extract the appropriate information to make correct design decisions for the projects. Alternatively, it is preferred to get expert advice from a sustainable design consultant. The fact about these design decisions, as Edward Mazria points out, is that there is not any extra cost associated with the implementation of these decisions, rather the question is how much will the project save by implementing the appropriate Design Decisions!

For any project, and even as early as the conceptual design phase, CDL can provide sustainable design guidelines based on the simulation results of a “simple box” energy model and work with the design team to identify alternative Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) as the design strategies to achieve the project’s sustainability goal. These ECMs may include some or all of the aforementioned ten critical decisions to meet the sustainable goal of the project. This simplified energy model has the potential of providing valuable information on HVAC system selection and lighting design as well as being applied towards IPc1 credit of LEED v4 too.

For more information, please contact CDL and let us know if we can be of any help in your projects.