The Jerusalem Seminar in Architecture

Green Design // from Theory to Practice

25-27.01.2009

Speakers

Khee Poh Lam

BA (Architecture and Environmental Design)(Hons); B. Arch.(Hons), University of Nottingham; Ph.D. in Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University; Registered Architect (UK); Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Professor Lam teaches architectural design (with a focus on systems integration), building performance modeling, building controls and diagnostics as well as acoustics and lighting. His fields of research are in total building performance (TBP) studies and the development of computational design support systems. He was Director of the Graduate Program in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon, and is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as at Xian Jiaotong University, China.

Professor Lam’s work has been widely published, and he serves as a member of the inaugural Editorial Boards of both the Journal of Building Performance Simulation, (Taylor and Francis, UK), and Building Simulation: An International Journal (Springer and Tsinghua University Press).

He has completed many, major, funded- research projects, among which is the recently completed project titled “Integrated concurrent design of high efficiency commercial buildings”, funded by the NIST ATP program in USA, in collaboration with United Technologies Research Center.

Professor Lam is currently a consultant to the Energy Foundation (US) working specifically with the China Sustainable Energy Program. He was also a building performance consultant for several major projects in the private and public sectors in Singapore. In 1998, Professor Lam led a TBP team in an international design competition entry, working with T. R. Hamzah and Yeang to provide input on TBP and environmental performance simulation studies for the proposed design. The submission won the competition for the design and construction of the proposed New National Library Board Building in Singapore. This building has been awarded “Platinum” rating for green building by the Building and Construction Authority, Singapore under the Green Mark Scheme. It also won 1st prize in the 2007 ASEAN Energy Award.

The Human Dimension in Product and Process Modelling of Green Building Design

There is little doubt in most people’s minds that planet earth is experiencing climate and ecological change of unprecedented rate and scale. If not seriously and urgently addressed, the problem has the potential to threaten the security and stability of human existence globally. In part, this situation is brought about by the phenomenal expansion of the built environment, particularly in the Asian and Middle Eastern regions. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development recently published its first report on Energy Efficiency in Buildings [1]. The report states that buildings are responsible for at least 40% of energy use in many countries - consuming energy derived primarily from fossil fuels. One critical contributing role that the building industry can play is to adopt an ecological and holistic performance-based building delivery approach to the entire process – from the macro scale of urban planning to the micro level of individual building design. An example of performance-based approach to design is a well established model based on the Total Building Performance (TBP) concept [2]. This concept was originally advocated by a team at Carnegie Mellon University, in the early 1980s and has been applied successfully to several projects in North America, Europe and Asia (such as the Robert L. Preger Intelligent Workplace at Carnegie Mellon University, The Laboratory of Design for Cognition, Électricité de France, Paris, as well as the Urban Redevelopment Authority Building and the National Library Building, Singapore. TBP is an integrated and holistic knowledge-based framework for conceptualizing, specifying, designing, analyzing and commissioning a building project. It can provide a comprehensive brief for a client as well as the project team who are committed to quality and high performance throughout the project duration, from inception to completion, and can even extend to post-occupancy management and maintenance. TBP is not just about the application of “hi-tech” building systems and/or materials. TBP seeks to rationally and systematically exploit the synergy of the various relevant technologies and management know-how to bring about desirable building performance at a reasonable cost. Knowledge and integrated teamwork are clearly essential ingredients within the strategic framework for success in developing future high performance buildings. This is a complex endeavour requiring integrative inputs from multi-disciplinary professional teams. Meanwhile, advancements in building performance simulation have been significant, with new and improved computational tools that address the changing needs of design throughout the building delivery life cycle. These computational developments aim to support sustainable design and the creation of healthy, comfortable and productive habitats for human activity. Ironically, defining such human activity “accurately” as input factors in performance modelling remains probably the single most complex and challenging task. For example, research has shown that for a variety of reasons, actual occupancy rate in modern office buildings is frequently only 40-60% of the design assumption. This has consequences not only on energy consumption but also the maintenance of comfort conditions in buildings. A mismatch between designed and actual operating conditions results in excessive provision of heating/cooling and difficulty in optimizing control of building systems. This challenge lies squarely with the architect, whose responsibility it is to thoroughly understand the client’s operational requirements and translate that “qualitative” descriptive brief into an architectural design solution, accompanied by appropriate quantitative parameters that can be communicated to the engineering design team members for producing concurrent technical solutions. Recognizing this crucial communicative role should prompt architects to play a more proactive leadership role in building performance modelling. Simulation tools will continue to evolve to address, amongst others, two major objectives: first, to make simulation tools more accessible to the architectural profession to support the open-ended nature of design inquiry; and second, to enable effective “real-time” sharing of design information between the entire team through a web-based infrastructure. The pervasive use of these tools will ultimately depend on how they can effectively support the design decision-making process (providing a level of confidence on the predicted performance of the solution) while reducing project overheads such as time, manpower, training and computational resources typically associated with advanced performance simulations.

[1] Energy Efficiency in Buildings: Facts and Trends, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2007 PDF
[2] Loftness,V., V. Hartkopf, P. Mill, "A Critical Framework for Building Evaluation: Total Building Performance, Systems Integration, and Levels of Measurement and Assessment", Chapter 9 in Building Evaluation, edited by Wolfgang F.E. Preiser, Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York, 1989.

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Khee Poh Lam

Image: The New National Library Building, Singapore. Architecture T. R. Hamzah & Yeang.