Fall 2008 Arch 226: Environmental Building Design
Ecohouse Competition
The design of an EcoHouse is used as the vehicle to demonstrate your full knowledge of environmental building design: to include not only "good design practices", but passive solar and ventilation strategies, energy efficient envelope, and sustainable design as it pertains to both the building and the site. I need to see "materials" -- "details" -- "concepts".
The study of the LEED® evaluation system has been the focus of this term. It is an important tool to use in both creating and marketing green buildings -- as well as a means to compare the relative "greenness" of buildings one to another.
A central part of this design problem will be to use the LEED® criteria to focus and guide the design of your Ecohouse. You must design, document and validate an Ecohouse that meets the minimum LEED® Platinum criteria. As part of this assignment, you are to include a completed LEED® spreadsheet that has both a checklist clearly showing:
-what criteria your building meets
-what criteria your building does not meet
-short paragraph on each point (in a comments column) explaining what you have done to meet the criteria, and a convincing explanation regarding any criteria that you were not able to meet (if not, why??) -- you will have to modify the excel spreadsheet to increase the row height to accommodate the paragraph.
Big hint... A lot of LEED® points are available to URBAN buildings. Do not assume that a retreat need be rural. You will get more points by looking at innovative ways to densify the city, rather than eating up green space... look for old parking lots, sites that need remediation the soil, old industrial areas. DO remove the asphalt and remediate the site with naturalized plantings to improve the environment, absorb CO2, offset heat island. To shoot for carbon neutral you need to earn all 10 EA optimise energy performance credits! For this project it is more important to have an efficient envelope than to reuse structure and materials to get those other credits. Please build new, but you may specific materials with a high recycled content.
Carbon:
Another key "new" piece of information that is required by this competition is a Carbon calculation. There is information on their brief and some links to show you how this is done.
Required Information:
Please include on your boards information that describes the climate of your location. EVERYTHING about sustainable design must relate to the climate and location. Graphics like climate charts are helpful.... latitude, longitude, sun angles to accompany your solar shading diagrams.... Remember that your boards are going to a different country, to be judged with entries from all over the world. They need to understand the impact of your climate. You need not situate your building in Canada. This is an international competition and there will be entries from around the world. But if located elsewhere, please be sure that your design is specific to their ecological region (cold, hot arid, hot humid and temperate).
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