A weekly journal on architecture, anthropology and radiant based heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The role of indoor environmental ergonomics, industrial design, HVAC as a health care issue and other human factors in the design of indoor spaces.
Excerpt: “Humans help to direct microbial biodiversity patterns in buildings – not only as building occupants, but also through architectural design strategies. The impact of human design decisions in structuring the indoor microbiome offers the possibility to use ecological knowledge to shape our buildings in a way that will select for an indoor microbiome that promotes our health and well-being.”
Citation: Kembel SW, Meadow JF, O’Connor TK, Mhuireach G, Northcutt D, et al. (2014) Architectural Design Drives the Biogeography of Indoor Bacterial Communities. PLoS ONE 9(1): e87093. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0087093
A LEED gold-certified building addition by Lord Aeck Sargent houses the University of Michigan Energy Institute (UMEI) and features some innovative sustainable design strategies. The two-story, exposed steel structure is clad with red brick and glass on the ground floor, a glass curtain wall wrapped around the upper floor’s east, south and west facades, and a rounded front on the south façade, which faces south. A horizontal fritted glass sunscreen shade the upper floor, and a solar sundial tells the solar time of day in Ann Arbor and allows one to delineate the time difference to other important cities throughout the globe.
Click on the photo's or follow this link to read more about the building addition to the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Laboratory building, which underwent the second phase of a renovation at the same time as the addition was built.
Lord, Aeck & Sargent Inc. – dba Lord Aeck Sargent – is an award-winning architectural and planning firm serving clients in academic, historic preservation, scientific, arts and cultural, multi-family housing and mixeduse, and urban design and planning markets. The firm’s core values are responsive design, technological expertise and exceptional service. In 2007, Lord Aeck Sargent was one of the first architecture firms to adopt The 2030 Challenge, an initiative whose ultimate goal is the design of carbon-neutral buildings, or buildings that use no fossil-fuel greenhouse gas-emitting energy to operate, by the year 2030. Lord Aeck Sargent is also calling for increased transparency in the building products industry by urging manufacturers to disclose the chemical components of their products utilizing the Health Product Declaration,™ an industry standard format for conveying details about product content and associated health information, or Declare, the “nutrition label” for building products launched by the International Living Future Institute. --
RBc: I love the simple and elegant solution of shading the ground floor with the overhang of the upper floor and the upper floor shaded by a horizontal fritted glass sunscreen. The building also uses chilled beam amongst its efficiency and comfort strategies.
Background: Indoor air pollutants (IAPs) cause multiple health impacts. Prioritizing mitigation options that differentially impact individual pollutants and comparing IAPs to other environmental health hazards requires a common metric of harm. Objectives: The objective was to demonstrate a methodology to quantify and compare health impacts from IAPs. The methodology is needed to assess population health impacts of large-scale initiatives – including energy efficiency upgrades and ventilation standards – that affect indoor air quality (IAQ). Methods: Available disease incidence and disease impact models for specific pollutant-disease combinations were synthesized with data on measured concentrations to estimate the chronic heath impact, in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), due to inhalation of a subset of IAPs in U.S. residences. Model results were compared to independent estimates of DALYs lost due to disease. Results: PM2.5, acrolein, and formaldehyde accounted for the vast majority of DALY losses caused by IAPs considered in this analysis, with impacts on par or greater than estimates for secondhand tobacco smoke and radon. Confidence intervals of DALYs lost derived from epidemiology-based response functions are tighter than those derived from toxicology-based, inter-species extrapolations. Statistics on disease incidence in the US indicate that the upper-bound confidence interval for aggregate IAP harm is implausibly high. Conclusions: The demonstrated approach may be used to assess regional and national initiatives that impact IAQ at the population level. Cumulative health impacts from inhalation in U.S. residences of the IAPs assessed in this study are estimated at 400—1100 DALYs annually per 100,000 people.
Designing Buildings Wiki has been created with one simple goal: To put all construction industry knowledge in one place and make it available to everyone for free.
Background: Construction in the UK employs 3 million people in 280,000 organisations, each holding a vast amount of expert knowledge. Everything from how to create a brief for a new project, right through to getting tax breaks for water efficient taps. But much of that knowledge is inaccessible, fragmented and dispersed. If we put it all in one place, where everyone can find it, Construction UK will be more efficient, more collaborative, more innovative and better able to compete in the global market place.
Designing Buildings Wiki is a cross-discipline, collaborative knowledge base where the whole construction industry can come together and share what we know on a single, free resource.
The first-ever textbook of children's environmental health. Comprehensively assembled and edited by two pediatricians
who are widely recognized leaders and pioneers in the field of children's
environmental health.
An ideal course textbook or collateral reading in schools of
public health and in universities that offer majors in public health or
environmental science. Suitable for public health practitioners, pediatricians and
pediatric trainees; family physicians; environmental scientists; nurses and
nursing students; students in schools of public health; college undergraduates
majoring in public health, environmental health or environmental science;
health and environmental policy makers in governments and NGOs.
Over the past four decades, the prevalence of autism,
asthma, ADHD, obesity, diabetes, and birth defects have grown substantially
among children around the world. Not coincidentally, more than 80,000 new
chemicals have been developed and released into the global environment during
this same period. Today the World Health Organization attributes 36% of all
childhood deaths to environmental causes.
Children's environmental health is a new and expanding
discipline that studies the profound impact of chemical and environmental
hazards on child health. Amid mounting evidence that children are exquisitely
sensitive to their environment-and that exposure during their developmental
"windows of susceptibility" can trigger cellular changes that lead to
disease and disability in infancy, childhood, and across the life span-there is
a compelling need for continued scientific study of the relationship between
children's health and environment.
The Textbook of Children's Environmental Health codifies the
knowledge base and offers an authoritative and comprehensive guide to this
important new field. Edited by two internationally recognized pioneers in the
area, this volume presents up-to-date information on the chemical, biological,
physical, and societal hazards that confront children in today's world:
pesticides, indoor and outdoor air pollution, lead, arsenic, phthalates,
bisphenol A, brominated flame retardants, ionizing radiation, electromagnetic
fields, and the built environment. It presents carefully documented data on
rising rates of disease in children, offers a critical summary of new research
linking pediatric disease with environmental exposures, and explores the
cellular, molecular, and epigenetic mechanisms underlying diseases of
environmental origin.
With this volume's emphasis upon integrating theory and
practice, readers will find practical approaches to channeling scientific
findings into evidence-based strategies for preventing and identifying the
environmental hazards that cause disease in children. It is a landmark work
that will serve as the field's benchmark for years to come.
Readership: Practitioners and researchers in pediatrics,
public health, nursing, life and environmental sciences, toxicology,
obstetrics, developmental psychology, and health economics.
RBc: We look forward to getting this new publication…in the
meantime be sure to check out these links on indoor environmental quality:
Introduction: “The increasing importance of health issues
for building services engineers needs to be emphasised and therefore the
decision was taken to include more information on health aspects of building
services in CIBSE Guide A: Environmental design. A review of the current
legislation was undertaken, along with a review of current guidelines and their
relevance to building services engineers. The results of this study are now
published as CIBSE TM40: Health issues in building services, and extracts from
this publication comprise chapter 8 in the 2006 edition of CIBSE Guide A. The
full text of TM40 is also included on the CD-ROM that accompanies CIBSE Guide
A. The objective is to inform and educate building service designers and
managers of the health implications of the services for which they are
responsible, and to give recommendations for limiting, or preferably avoiding,
any adverse health effects.”
RBc: This 2006 publication offers a good overview of IEQ
concerns in a single document. CIBSE, ASHRAE and REHVA all offer complimentary publications
useful to the student or design practitioner.
Excerpt: "The main idea of the workshop was to gather the opinions and ideas amongst the workshop participants about personal control over indoor climate and user behaviour. The workshop followed the introduced program reporting in details below main results and discussions."
Sample: 1 of 15 topics addressed
Statement #1. We know how building occupants use their
adjustable wall-thermostats and other controls
The majority of the participants disagreed (90%). Examples
given to prove that we still have limited knowledge about the use of controls
(specifically adjustable thermostats) were:
· In open-plan office buildings occupants may
not adjust the thermostat as they believe that the uncomfortable thermal
sensation is too subjective and an adjustment may cause complaints between
colleagues. Additionally, it seems a common experience that many people
(notably women) do not have a good idea of the functionality of control
devices.
· Residential
buildings: the family often compare the use of the thermostats with the direct
contact and perception and as a consequence they may adjust it wrongly. In
fact, often people react to the instant thermal sensation because they do not
know the functionality of the HVAC system that is behind the control tool (it
is not explained to them how the system works and how they can adjust it).
An additional opinion between the audience also raised the
problem that often we don´t know where the thermostat is located and what it is
really measuring. In fact, often it is attached to a wall at a very high place
resulting in measuring some air temperature that is very different than the one
perceived by the occupants (as proved in scientific studies).
Suggestion on the use and intrinsic logic design of smart
phones was given for the HVAC professionals in order to use their knowledge and
their experience to provide and adjust the environmental thermal conditions.
Excerpt: “Building science is, to a large extent, a “black
box” to many students, as it involves many invisible physical processes such as
thermal radiation, heat transfer, air flow, and moisture transport that are
hard to imagine. But students must learn how these processes occur and interact
within a building in order to understand how design, construction, operation,
and maintenance affect them and, therefore, the wellbeing of the entire
building. These processes form a “science envelope” that is much more difficult
to understand than the shape of the building envelope alone. With 3D graphics
that can visualize these invisible processes in a virtual building, simulation
games provide a promising key to open the black box. They offer a highly
interactive learning environment in which STEM content and pedagogy can be
embedded in the gameplay, game scores can be aligned to educational objectives
to provide formative assessments, and students can be enticed to devote more
time and explore more ramifications than didactic instruction. A significant
advantage is that students can freely experiment with a virtual building to
learn a concept before exploring it in a real building with all the
consequences and costs that may entail.
A new grant ($900K) from the National Science Foundation
will allow us to develop a simulation game engine called SimBuilding based on
computational building simulation. The application of advanced building
simulation technologies to developing training simulation games will be an
original contribution of this project. Although building simulation has become
an important tool in the industry and can be very helpful in understanding how
a building works, it has never been used to build simulation games before.
SimBuilding will unveil this untapped instructional power. Furthermore, this
game engine will be written in JavaScript and WebGL, allowing it to run on most
computing devices.”
As the heat wave continues, the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) has released a new Guide to provide greater understanding and improved prediction of overheating in commercial buildings. ‘TM52: The limits of thermal comfort: avoiding overheating in European buildings' will be published today on the online Knowledge Portal and will be soon followed by ‘TM49: Probabilistic design summer years for London'.
Both guides offer information to help avoid uncomfortable conditions for occupants. These support the existing publication ‘KS16: How to manage overheating in buildings' which gives guidance for building managers and owners about the causes of overheating and how to mitigate it. CIBSE also provides guidance for building managers and occupants in the form of top tips on how to manage overheating, available to download from the CIBSE website.
Fergus Nicol, lead author of the Guide TM52 commented: "Overheating has become a major problem in building design. The rising cost of energy combined with global climate change has reduced the options available for building comfortable, low-energy buildings. Research has been directed towards methods for increasing indoor winter temperatures but this can lead to lightweight, highly insulated buildings that respond poorly in the summer. To assess this further, CIBSE responded by forming the Overheating Task Force."
The CIBSE Overheating Task Force explored what is needed from building designers, service systems, ventilation and facilities management in order to maintain comfortable living and working conditions, especially in the summer months. Occupant comfort is particularly important as it directly impacts productivity and health which in turn affects employers. Only recently it was quoted that Mark Zuckerburg, founder, Facebook, keeps his offices at 15°C as it is believed to increase productivity. CIBSE's recommended temperature is 20°C.
CIBSE President George Adams also emphasised the importance of designing buildings fit for a changing climate due to global warming in his inauguration speech entitled ‘Whole Life Thinking'. The subject was also discussed further at the CIBSE Natural Ventilation Group event, Passive Building Technology in Practice, 21st June at UCL.
We are proud to introduce the Comfable, a new kind of smart suggestion technology application. Comfable is ideal for everybody who wants to know real time personalized “Feels Like” temperature for planning what to wear and where and when to go. It has six plugins (Wear, Where, When, Sun, Energy and Plant) to answer your common daily questions.
RBc: I really like what these Prof's are doing...it succinctly
points out that there are many parameters to thermal comfort beyond the HVAC industries
fixation on using air temperature as a sole proxy to what people feel.
It was serendipitous that my keynote at the Pathways 2 Sustainability
Conference was in the Telus Spark Science Center. The HVAC system was designed
by the Calgary office of Dialog who have described the IEQ systems as;
“Along with lots of natural Calgary light and smart water
use, the building design brings fresh air to every room. Rather than a typical,
forced-air ventilation and cooling system, the building incorporates
displacement ventilation and radiant panels to distribute fresh air and highly
effective heating and cooling for visitor comfort. The atrium and extensive
lobby areas are heated and cooled with a radiant chilled/heated slab system for
a non-intrusive but highly effective conditioning system. Underseat
displacement ventilation is provided in the 250-person IMAX theatre for optimum
thermal comfort and ventilation effectiveness.”
Interestingly, the HVAC zone for the exhibit hall (converted
into the P2S2013 conference space) was tested beyond its functional capacity as over
250 delegates filled a space likely designed for less. (hopefully someone from
Dialog will show up and correct my assumption). Despite the load, the thermal comfort was well beyond
most conference halls that I have visited (and there have been hundreds). The
air quality not so much. As the occupant load increased it was necessary to
open the adjoining doors connecting a large open hallway to the conference room
and that one simple solution seemed to do the trick for most of the attendees.
The point being - despite a heavy occupant load during three days
of rain the radiant cooling panels never once condensed as the air system was
capable of maintaining a lean air mixture.
I really like how the Architectural/Interior Designers and
Mechanical Engineers incorporated the ventilation columns into the space – very
nice.
Brad Struble Telus Spark representative and director of
design gave us the tour and did a great job explaining the project as well as
helping adapt the space to the conference and for the adaptive measures to help
maintain the indoor environmental quality.
You can learn more about the project including the radiant
based HVAC system from this video (can view in Google Chrome).
Excerpt: “This is the third booklet in our PLEA Notes
series. Each of these Notes is intended to deal with one particular and narrow
aspect of design, of a technical /scientific nature. These Notes serve a dual
purpose: to be a learning tool, introducing the subject and discussing it in mainly
qualitative terms, but also to be a design tool, to provide quantitative data
and methods for the consideration of the particular subject matter in design.
An implicit aim is also to create an authoritative reference work, which would provide
a concise but comprehensive summary of the state of the art of the subject.
In this Note 3 the undergraduate student will find part 1,
then sections 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 of part 2 as well as part 3 of particular
interest. The practising designer (using the above sections as introduction)
will - we hope - find part 4 most useful. The research student, or anyone
interested in the whys and wherefores will find part 2 as a unique reference
source.
References for the comfort index data sheets are given in
footnote form, similarly in places where they refer to that page only. General
references are listed in alphabetical order on pages 62 – 63.
We hope that this Note will contribute in some small way to
the creation of better buildings, healthier indoor environments and energy
conservation, thus serve the broad aims of PLEA and a sustainable future.”
Citation: Auliciems, A., Szokolay, S.V. (2007) Thermal Comfort, Design
Tools and Techniques. PLEA Note 3(2nd Ed.), Passive and Low Energy
Architecture International. < http://plea-arch.org/?page_id=125>
accessed April 30th, 2013
Excerpt: “Europeans spend most of their time in indoor
environments and poor indoor air quality is responsible for 2 million
disability adjusted life years (DALYs) lost in European Union (EU) every
year.
The European Year of Air 2013 and the expected revision of the
ambient air legislation mark an appropriate moment to stress the importance of
indoor air quality (IAQ) and place it in the heart of the energy efficiency
strategy. The HealthVent project on the Health-Based Ventilation
Guidelines for Europe was launched in 2010 under the Programme of Community
Action in the Field of Health 2008-2013 with the objective of developing
guidelines for health-based ventilation for non-industrial buildings in Europe
taking into consideration energy efficiency requirements. To present project
results, an event was organised at the European Parliament in Brussels on
February 20th, 2013. The event was hosted by Mrs Catherine Stihler, Member of
the European Parliament (MEP), and was coordinated by EFA’s EU Policy Officer,
Ms Roberta Savli, a partner in HealthVent project along with active
contributions from the other members of the HealthVent consortium.”
Source:HealthVent and IAQ under the Second Programme of Community Action
in the Field of Health, HealthVent,
The authors review what we know and don’t know about how
thermal comfort and indoor air quality affect performance. The article is
written in the form of answers to 40 frequently asked questions. The authors,
also widely respected, offer opinions based on what the research shows.
Excerpt: “As experienced researchers in the effects of
thermal comfort and indoor air quality on performance, we are often asked to
give our best estimate of how, and to what extent, performance is affected by different
aspects of indoor climate. This article provides a brief summary of our
personal opinions, in the form of answers to 40 frequently asked questions. Our
answers are based on the results of behavioral experiments conducted to date.
We offer no opinions on long-term health effects of indoor environmental
quality. We provide some references to relevant sources, but there is not
enough space for all such references. We list some questions we cannot answer
as topics for future research in this area.”
Excerpt: "Housing investment which improves thermal comfort in the
home can lead to health improvements, especially where the improvements are
targeted at those with inadequate warmth and those with chronic respiratory
disease.
Improvements in warmth and affordable warmth may be an
important reason for improved health. Improved health may also lead to reduced
absences from school or work. Improvements in energy efficiency and provision
of affordable warmth may allow householders to heat more rooms in the house and
increase the amount of usable space in the home. Greater usable living space
may lead to more use of the home, allow increased levels of privacy, and help
with relationships within the home. An overview of the best available research evidence
suggests that housing which promotes good health needs to be an appropriate
size to meet household needs, and be affordable to maintain a comfortable
indoor temperature."
“Industrial designers determine the form and interaction qualities of manufactured products...They study people at work, at home and in motion to create satisfying experiences with products from the kitchen and the office to the hospital and the warehouse…” Excerpt from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).
In our opinion, industrial design has been overlooked by the HVAC industry – illustrated by consumers facing difficulties selling homes with HVAC systems which have “beast in the boiler room.”
Be reminded by S. Claire Conroy from Residential Architecture, "It's time architects of every discipline understand residential architecture for what it really is: everyone's most intimate connection with architecture. It's not simply a “test bed”—it's a vessel for our lives on their most personal level. That makes the stakes very high indeed. No one is more discriminating and demanding than a residential client.”
"A lot of it has to do with how we are responding at a physiological level to what we see as we walk in through the door." Sarah Susanka, Architect
“Industrial designers determine the form and interaction qualities of manufactured products...They study people at work, at home and in motion to create satisfying experiences with products from the kitchen and the office to the hospital and the warehouse…” Excerpt from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).
"In any industry, one of the most important and difficult tasks is to explain a nuanced process to someone unfamiliar with the field. At its grass roots, design is a process like many others; it has theories, strategies and examples that can be explained on a general level. It’s not a matter of what type of information is given, but rather how it is presented and to what type of audience."
Speaking Design to Non-Designers, IDSA
