Net Zero Emerging Leaders Internship
Context
In early 2020, Salazar Architect received a Net Zero Emerging Leaders Internship grant from Energy Trust of Oregon (ETO) to hire an intern for 12 weeks to further our AIA 2030 Commitment goals. Our intention with this opportunity was to research and test a prototypical sustainable design process that would be implemented across all of our projects regardless of whether or not it was seeking any specific sustainability certification.
Purpose
As a public interest design firm, Salazar understands the need to exercise leadership in creating the built environment. Buildings and environments in the US represent the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, with low-income neighborhoods most impacted by global warming and industrial pollution. Our firm signed onto the AIA 2030 commitment in 2019 because it is well aligned with our drive to create a more equitable built environment. Then in January of 2020, Salazar restructured the firm into three design labs in order to more intentionally practice our mission of public-interest design: the Sustainable Design Lab, the Community Design Lab, and the Well-being Design Lab. The timing of this transition coincided with hiring Emily Waldinger as our ETO Net Zero Emerging Leaders Intern, who was brought on to research and test methods for energy modeling, data collection and EUI reporting that could be formally integrated into our practice.
“The typical systems and structures that the architecture and planning profession follows are not set up to inherently produce sustainable buildings. In order for us to move towards net-zero, even net-positive buildings we must intentionally change the process by which we produce those buildings.” - Emily Waldinger
Research
Emily’s research first began with putting Salazar’s projects into the AIA Design Data Exchange (DDx) to understand where the firm currently stands energy-wise.
“It can be difficult to reach EUI targets for affordable housing given its typical budgetary constraints. That being said, having only joined the AIA 2030 commitment in 2019, our numbers show that we aren’t too far behind. According to data from energy models generated by Insight 360, the average project EUI reduction of our seven most recent projects is 34.2%, which means we have a 45.8% delta that we need to close by the year 2024 to meet the AIA 2030 Commitment goal of an 80% EUI reduction. It’s a large task, but I’m confident that evaluating Salazar’s current design process and optimizing it can get us close.” - Emily
After inputting projects into AIA DDx, Emily researched energy modeling tools that would best suit Salazar’s design process. The main priorities were to find tools that could easily integrate with Sketchup during conceptual design phases, then with Revit during design development and construction document phases. We tested Autodesk Insight 360 and Sefaira first.
To test a sustainable design process, Emily used a 5 over 1 mixed-use affordable housing project in Portland that was in the conceptual design phase at the beginning of the case study. We focused on testing how to effectively integrate energy modeling in the Conceptual and Schematic Design phases, while incorporating an internal sustainability workshop process that included a team kickoff meeting to discuss AIA 2030 goals and an eco-charrette with the Sustainable Design Lab. Emily used the massing models and ideas generated from the eco-charrette into Sefaira and Insight 360 to analyze the energy performance of each scenario.
We quickly discovered that timing is important and integrating energy modeling into a well developed design process is difficult. It is also challenging to improve the energy model performance while also meeting the rigorous affordable housing programming constraints. Furthermore, Sefaira and Insight have different sets of input and outputs, causing our team to be unsure of which program’s results to trust.
After some trial and error, we found that Sefaira was a useful tool in Conceptual and Schematic design phases because it works well with Sketchup and we can easily compare scenarios of generic massing models. Autodesk Insight 360 works best with Revit, making it the ideal tool for energy modeling during later design phases. The more detailed the Revit model, the more accurate the data produced by Insight 360. Emily and the SDL are continuing to update our Revit template and standards so that we can generate more accurate energy models throughout the entire design process.
Through the eco-charrette and Sefaira energy modeling process for our Portland case study, we learned that focusing on developing a more efficient envelope, rather than more complex massing schemes or exterior additions like sunshades, would provide the greatest improvement on the building’s energy use, while still meeting the client’s programmatic requirements.
Takeaways
After Emily completed the case study, the main takeaways were:
In the Pacific Northwest climate, prioritize an efficient envelope over massing and exterior shading interventions when designing affordable housing. Focusing on an efficient envelope will have the greatest impact on the building’s energy use, while still meeting the client’s strict programmatic requirements.
Sefaira works best in our conceptual and early schematic design phases because it is easy to use with Sketchup and it is able to compare early generic massing model options.
Insight is the most effective tool to use during Design Development and Construction Documents phases because of its operability with robust and detailed Revit models.
The ideal process integrates Sefaira and Insight together, using them strategically throughout the design process to complement and augment one another
Building off this research and testing, we developed Salazar’s first prototypical sustainable design process that integrates AIA DDx reporting, the Sustainable Design Lab, and energy modeling tools to increase building performance across all our projects. This process creates time and space for our team to be more intentional and accountable about reaching our sustainability goals.
Next Steps
“My internship was only the beginning. What is most important is where we go from here. The next steps that Salazar will take from here is to first standardize their AIA DDx reporting protocol. The data is only as good as the information we can gather. We want to be able to track how our design process is affecting the project EUI by documenting a project EUI at each stage. We can collect this data through sharing a google form with project managers that makes it easy for them to document progress at key milestones.” - Emily
Moving forward, we will continue to analyze our current use of energy modeling tools, and test potential new software like Cove Tool and Fenestra Pro. Finally, we want to perform post occupancy evaluations more frequently to help ensure that the buildings we design end up performing efficiently in reality.
“Unfortunately, there are no incentives or requirements to conduct post-occupancy evaluation. Our energy models could say that we are reaching our goals, but without POEs we can never understand the true impact of the things we build.” - Emily
We will continue to encourage our clients to take part in post occupancy evaluations, while also continuing our partnership with Portland State University’s Research Based Design Initiative to conduct post-occupancy evaluations on our projects as appropriate. In this way we can create a more closed loop feedback cycle to continually learn from our work and improve our process to generate buildings that are more sustainable, community-focused, and well-being informed.
Energy Trust of Oregon Net Zero Emerging Leaders Initiative
For more information, here’s a link to all of the Energy Trust’s NZEL presentations: