An Economic Approach to Retrofits When the owners of the Empire State Building in 2007 decided to move forward with a new capital improvement plan, they were looking for standard improvements to get the building to Class A commercial status. At the time they were looking at traditional, “common sense” improvements, such as bringing the 25% to 30% of the building lacking air conditioning some thermal control. The Empire State Building retrofit was selected by the Clinton Climate Initiative as the first, symbollic project for its retrofit division. CCI is now partner in more than 250 retrofits in 20 cities
An Economic Approach to Retrofits Those 38 percent in energy savings will reduce CO2 emissions by 105,000 metric tons over 15 years, according to projections released by the building’s owners. Photo by Alex Padalka Upgrading the existing chiller cells, some parts of which having been in use since 1931, represented $16 million in savings over what it would have cost to replace the entire plant. The Goals “Typically, a building retrofit will get a 15-20-percent [energy savings],” Baczko says. “And that’s if they’re lucky.” In comparison, the 38 percent the Empire State Building is shooting for seems daunting. But the
An Economic Approach to Retrofits Air handler units are being replaced with variable-frequency drive fans for better efficiency and more tenant control. Occupied spaces will have demand-control ventilation and air quality monitoring, and the whole building will get an upgrade of existing building controls for better HVAC performance, with the addition of metering. Photo by Alex Padalka Instead of ordering 6,500 new windows, the team is simply refurbishing the existing ones, creating triple glazed panels, and performing the work from inside the building. “It was challenging exploring ides that might not be implemented, looking at the ideas on the edges
The entry deadline is fast approaching for an international competition to design a Holocaust Memorial for the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Atlantic City plans to build a Holocaust Memorial The final registration deadline is March 15, 2010. First-stage submissions are due on April 1, 2010. Jurors include architects Wendy Evans Joseph who helped design the U.S Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.; former Pritzker Prize winner Richard Meier; and Daniel Liebeskind, who designed the master plan for the World Trade Center site. The competition is being sponsored by the Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial Corporation, a
This week, the AIA announced the nine recipients of the 2010 AIA Young Architects Award. The prize recognizes individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the profession early in their careers. Architects who have been licensed 10 years or fewer, regardless of their age, are eligible. The winners will be honored at a ceremony in Miami during the 2010 AIA national convention, scheduled for June 10 to 12. AIA Names Winners of 2010 Young Architects Award David Burt, AIA After graduating from Mississippi State University, David Burt worked for Foil-Wyatt Architects in Jackson, Mississippi. Shortly after,
In 2009, just two months after the Dutch- and Chinese-born architects Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu established their office Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO–IL) in Brooklyn, the pair was recommended to compete in the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program, which gives emerging designers the opportunity to design the courtyard entrance of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. “We submitted our very thin portfolio then, but we were not selected as one of the five finalists,” Idenburg recalls. Images courtesy SO-IL SO-IL won this year's MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program. Related Links: P.S.1 Goes Organic with WORK's Public Farm 1 At New York's
Photo courtesy Therese Bisell George Bissell George Bissell, FAIA, a Newport Beach, California architect who, in 2000, received the American Institute of Architects California Council Lifetime Achievement Award, died at 82 on January 2 of complications from lymphoma. Born in Los Angeles, Bissell was a 1953 graduate of the University of Southern California School of Architecture, where he later sat on the Dean’s Board of Councilors. He also served as president of AIA Orange County and of the AIA California Council, and was a director of the AIA National Board. A Fellow of the AIA since 1974, Bissell received over
In an effort to ease the exchange of structural information among construction project participants and between applications, Pennsylvania-based software developer Bentley Systems has released two tools, making them available to users without charge. The new applications, Structural Synchronizer V8i and Structural Dashboard V8i, released in late January, provide various features, including a shared repository for structural model data, the ability to pass data back and forth among several applications including those created by other vendors, and the capability to track revisions. The dashboard and synchronizer support a workflow management process that Bentley has dubbed Integrated Structural Modeling, or ISM. “Current
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