Category: Daylighting

Modernization of a Mid-Century High School Earns 2020’s Livable Building Award

Modernization of a Mid-Century High School Earns 2020’s Livable Building Award

The historic renovation and expansion of Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco has been recognized as the winner of CBE’s 2020 Livable Buildings Award. The design team conducted comprehensive carbon accounting, and the project is expected to yield net positive energy performance. Conferred annually by UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment, this program recognizes buildings that demonstrate ‘livability’ in terms of occupant satisfaction, sustainability and architectural design.

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Hiding in Plain Sight: In Pursuit of High-Performance Facades

Hiding in Plain Sight: In Pursuit of High-Performance Facades

No aspect of a building is more visible, or holds more didactic potential, than its facade. However, what you see is not always what you get. In spite of the facade’s explicit visibility, a facade’s appearance may not reveal much about a building’s performance in terms of energy, resilience or how it impacts the health and welfare of occupants. This most visible part of a building, when it comes to performance, is an enigma. To counter this, CBE researchers are working on multiple efforts to create new facade tools and metrics, and to document examples of excellence in terms of facade performance.

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Working From Home During the Covid-19 Crisis: Window Views May Help Emotional States, Productivity and Comfort

Working From Home During the Covid-19 Crisis: Window Views May Help Emotional States, Productivity and Comfort

Millions of people are working at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19, creating stress and impacting our well-being and productivity. Science shows that time spent in nature may improve our health and emotions, however, when we are not able to be in nature physically, we may derive benefits simply by access to windows with views. A study recently published by CBE found that a view from a window has positive impacts on emotion, cognitive performance and thermal comfort.

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Designing for Experiential Delight

Designing for Experiential Delight

Building standards and conventional practice are all about ’reducing the negative‘ — but what if the goal is to ’enhance the positive‘ instead? Aiming to create environments that are not only comfortable and healthy, but are connected to nature, provide a sense of place, and are a delight to be in. Designing for experience requires us to embrace a broader view of experiential aesthetics, going beyond the primacy of vision to recognize broader sensual qualities that contribute to the beauty and memorability of space.

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CBE and SERA Collaborate on new Biophilia Survey Module

CBE and SERA Collaborate on new Biophilia Survey Module

Biophilia — humans’ innate love of nature — is an idea that has inspired wide-ranging research on the benefits of human connection with nature. So how do we translate this wealth of research knowledge into making buildings that capture the benefits of nature? CBE and SERA Architects are jointly developing a biophilia option for CBE’s occupant survey to evaluate the impact of biophilic features in existing workspaces.

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New Technologies Offer Solutions for Understanding Indoor Environments

New Technologies Offer Solutions for Understanding Indoor Environments

Companies aspiring to sustainability and wellness have focused on managing workplace indoor environmental quality (IEQ), however undertaking IEQ measurements in a reliable manner can be challenging. In this post we discuss why continuous monitoring technologies are ideal for evaluating building IEQ performance.

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CBE Researchers Present New Methods for Design-phase Analysis of Daylighting, Ventilation and Comfort

CBE Researchers Present New Methods for Design-phase Analysis of Daylighting, Ventilation and Comfort

The gap between predicted and measured building performance poses an ongoing challenge for design teams and other building industry stakeholders. Because reliable methods for predicting building performance are critical to addressing this challenge, students, researchers and faculty at CBE are developing and testing new approaches to building performance simulation. In this post we describe recent and upcoming papers that discuss new and innovative simulation methods.

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