Building Envelope

REVIVE 2024: A Streamlined Retrofit Design Framework

Building retrofits need to scale now, but face many constraints that create pressure on project teams, making it difficult to design optimal retrofit solutions. In response, Phius has developed REVIVE 2024, a new standard for passive building retrofits with a supporting software tool. The standard is guided by thermal resilience as a leveling metric, and a whole building life cycle cost analysis (including the cost of embodied and operational carbon) to help choose an optimal retrofit package. The result is a cost-effective retrofit with minimal embodied carbon.

Beyond Passive House: Emerging Research from NYSERDA BoE Early Phase Funding

NYSERDA's Early Design Support Buildings of Excellence partners will showcase three affordable Passive House multi-family projects, each featuring a variety of electrification and decarbonization strategies. Magnusson Architecture and Planning, Curtis+Ginsberg Architects, and Paul Castrucci Architects will present their ongoing research on electrification strategies, integrating renewable energy, the value add of ERVs, embodied carbon strategies, and calculations to meet zero carbon such as ILFI's Zero Carbon framework.

Counting the True Cost of Carbon to Make the Case for Deep Energy Retrofits

There is considerable debate about the relative benefits of electrification with heat pumps and envelope improvements. It has been suggested that Deep Energy Retrofits (DERs) are impractical & not cost effective. However, when an accurate Social Cost of Carbon is considered, DERs begin to look much more financially feasible. We apply a systems thinking lens to explore how carbon emissions are valued. We will present two multifamily DER examples to show the operational and embodied carbon reduction potential.

Inside and Out: Insulating Our Existing Masonry Buildings

In the Northeast, we have the benefit and burden of a large stock of uninsulated masonry buildings of various typologies and conditions. Leaving these buildings as they are is untenable with the global effort to reduce carbon emissions, and will not address climate shifts, the fabric of community, or the health of occupants. We will explore insulating from the interior, exterior, or both.

Net Zero Carbon Roadmap for a College Campus

The path of net zero carbon must be carefully assessed, especially if we are laying out the roadmap for a college campus with historic buildings and aging infrastructure. In this session, we will explain how we developed a net zero carbon campus master plan through discussions between the owner, architect and energy consultants. We will include a case study of three building typologies from the ideal scenario through the factors driving the integrative process to achieve net zero design.

Embodied and Operational Decarbonization Trade-Offs in the Building Envelope

Some of the most efficient building envelope design strategies for reducing operational carbon involve increasing the enclosure assemblies’ thermal performance and requiring highly airtight systems. However, we are only starting to understand the trade-offs between operational and embodied decarbonization. To evaluate the trade-offs, this session will directly compare wall assemblies in a high-performance new construction building and wall assemblies in common existing building typologies.

Will Heat Pumps Break the Grid? Here’s Real Data!

What will it mean for the grid if we electrify all the things? The attempts to answer this question to date have been rooted in modeling assumptions. We’ll report from our NYSERDA-funded research project measuring the actual electric load profile of today’s electrically-heated high rise multifamily buildings in New York City, providing an empirical dataset that can be used to inform heating and cooling demand forecasting. The use case includes buildings built with electric heating in the 1960s-1980s and three new buildings with heat pumps.

Subscribe to Building Envelope