Fundamentals of Integrated Design for Sustainable Building

Marian Keeler, Prasad Vaidya

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118882276
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Design e architettura

The Fully Updated, Indispensible Study of Sustainable Design Principles

Fundamentals of Integrated Design for Sustainable Building is the first textbook to merge principles, theory, and practice into an integrated workflow. This book introduces the technologies and processes of sustainable design and shows how to incorporate sustainable concepts at every design stage. This comprehensive primer takes an active learning approach that keeps students engaged.

This book dispenses essential information from practicing industry specialists to provide a comprehensive introduction to the future of design. This new second edition includes:

• Expansive knowledge—from history and philosophy to technology and practice
• Fully updated international codes, like the CAL code, and current legislations
• Up-to-date global practices, such as the tools used for Life-Cycle Assessment
• Thorough coverage of critical issues such as climate change, resiliency, health, and net zero energy building
• Extensive design problems, research exercise, study questions, team projects, and discussion questions that get students truly involved with the material

Sustainable design is a responsible, forward-thinking method for building the best structure possible in the most efficient way. Conventional resources are depleting and building professionals are thinking farther ahead. This means that sustainable design will eventually be the new standard and everyone in the field must be familiar with the concepts to stay relevant. Fundamentals of Integrated Design for Sustainable Building is the ideal primer, with complete coverage of the most up to date information.

1
The Integrated Building Design Process

What Is Integrated Building Design?

Integrated building design is the practice of designing with sensitivity for sustainability. Not so long ago, the term “green design” was seen only in quotation marks, causing the meaning to seem infirm and of questionable viability. Today green design can be thought of as integrated building design when the process includes certain key elements: using the strengths of multiple team members, designing towards goals, and putting in place a method for accountability in design.

An evolution of the term, “integrative design,” is today gaining currency because of the nuanced difference: “Integrated” refers to a process that is complete; “integrative” is an ongoing process. Both address the work of imagining a green building and bringing it into operation. For purposes of this book, we refer to it as the integrated design process.

Integrated design concerns itself with energy, water and material resources, and indoor environmental quality decisions. These issues and strategies will be outlined in this chapter briefly and given in-depth treatment in the chapters that follow.

With integrated design, we treat design variables as interconnected and use them to develop and evaluate design solutions. As design students, and students of building science who study the built environment, you are learning to be problem solvers, which prompts you to imagine and anticipate the potential implications of even the most benign design decision. Learning integrated design will help you to use the knowledge of impacts in making design decisions. Every architectural design student should have a proficiency in these skills to be a productive and efficient team member.

Another key feature of integrated design is that design decisions made earlier in the process do not compromise the effectiveness of design decisions that need to be made later.

More than mainstream, conventional design, the integrated design process requires following a progression of setting goals and priorities, and evaluating the design choices honestly, to produce a successful green building. The process works because there is communication among team members, and because each team designer has an appreciation of the design challenges and responsibilities of the rest of the team.

Because every design decision produces a cascade of multiple effects, rather than an isolated impact, successful integrated design requires a necessary understanding of the interrelationship of each material, system, and spatial element (Figure 1-1). It requires all players to think holistically about the project rather than focus solely on an individual part.

Figure 1-1 Sketch showing site conditions and technologies in the Foster + Partners Civic Square project, Seattle, Washington. Every integrated design decision must be understood as having multiple impacts.

Image courtesy of PHA Consult.

The Process

The reality of professional practice can be mimicked in a studio on a student design project of any stripe by assigning different roles within a team and working collaboratively toward a solution. This can be applied to the design of a building, the development of a master plan, or even the creation of land-use policy or neighborhood development.

It is beneficial to learn the process of integrated design from the beginning of one’s design education so that it becomes the default approach. There is no script for the perfect integrated design process, but there are several key elements of the process that need to be incorporated into each design phase from conceptual design, design development, and during construction. These key elements are: set goals; brainstorm ideas in a charrette setting; develop ideas; perform analysis to aid evaluation of ideas; evaluate ideas in a charrette setting; and make decisions and document them. At the completion of a project, during critique, it is valuable to evaluate the effectiveness of the integrated design process for each team.

In this chapter we will see how the practice of integrated design plays out in professional practice.

Understand the Scope and Set Goals

It is helpful to develop a schedule of team meetings around project milestones or class deadlines, the first of which should be a discussion with the project stakeholders¹ that encompasses the following questions:

• Size and Type: What is the project type? What is the size and scale of the project? Is the project a large commercial high-rise tower; a sustainable neighborhood development; or a small, private school on five acres?
• Regulations and Codes: Is there a master plan governing new construction for the site that describes the project scope and construction phasing? Are there legislated guidelines for envelope design? Are there municipal, regional, state, or federal regulations governing sustainable design? Will green building codes or mandatory green building certifications be required for permitting? If so, what is the pace of code revisions? What are the population densities and land-use regulations of the project site?
• Geography: Is the project an urban infill or an open space development? What are the geographical and project site constraints? What is the climate zone, and what are the opportunities for passive energy design? What is the rainfall or precipitation on site? What environmental resources or constraints does the site provide? What are the public or low impact transport options available to the site?
• Environmental Performance Goals: Does the project location or client brief suggest performance goals for energy use, water use, material resource use? Does the client brief include certification for an environmental standard or a green rating system? Are these goals, and any additional ones, acceptable to the entire team?
• Project Budget: Where is the money coming from to fund the project? Is the source of funding a government agency, a municipality, a private developer, or a homeowner? Does the project budget anticipate and support the Environmental Performance Goals?

Answers to these questions will help integrated design teams map out their process.

Consider the Environmental Impacts

Before you can design responsibly, you need to understand the potential vulnerabilities of, and the opportunities available in the site and community. Figure 1-2 is an example of a resource map, showing an example of a graphic exercise that would help identify environme...