Low Carbon Buildings: Reducing Operational & Embodied Carbon

With the urgent need to dramatically reduce the carbon impact of buildings, West 2 for the College of Engineering at Penn State University shows a way forward with dramatic reductions in embodied and operational carbon. Featuring active learning spaces for teaching and research, making, testing and prototyping from a broad range of disciplines, this presentation will highlight the design process and strategies used to realize this low carbon building. Presented by the architect, engineer, and building scientist on how they evaluated and sought to optimize:
• Occupant thermal comfort
• Ultra-low energy performance
• Reductions in embodied carbon of the enclosure and structural systems
• High quality indoor environment
• Occupant health
The result exemplifies the fusion of design and performance while meeting the clients' cost and programmatic requirements, and simultaneously significantly reducing embodied carbon and meeting the Architecture 2030 goal of reducing operational energy use in buildings by 80%.