20th Annual Atmospheric Science Librarians International Conference
Keynote Presentation
9:00 am Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Room: Chelan 5
Data-Driven Design [of the World's Greenest Building]
Robert Pena, Associate Professor
Department of Architecture, University of Washington
The early 20th century marked an inflection point in the design and development of the built environment. The industrial revolution and breathtakingly cheap energy transformed our cities with the automobile and machinery in our buildings for heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting.
We’ve arrived at another inflection point, a paradigm-shift in our relationship to invention, energy and growth. Seattle's Bullitt Center, the world's greenest commercial office building, forecasts this change. It is a shift in outlook from the idea of buildings as machines for living to the concept of buildings as living systems; from buildings utterly dependent on energy intensive machinery for environmental control to climate responsive integrated systems powered by renewable energy.
The Bullitt Center is a living laboratory meant to inform how we will design and build in the 21st Century. It is serving as a vehicle to steer changes in public policy, challenging rules and codes that make living buildings illegal in most places. It is a test bed for emerging technology and a case study in data-driven design and decision-making.