Heliostats, Prisms, and Platinum

[Image Credit: TreeHugger]

Earlier this week I had the grand opportunity to tour the Genzyme Center in Cambridge MA with a group of engineers. This building is a little out of the ordinary; it was designed using a whole-systems approach to dramatically reduce its environmental impact, while providing an exceptional environment for those working inside. A system of heliostats on the roof track the sun throughout the day, aiming natural light downward through the expansive atrium. Gently swaying prisms suspended in the atrium then scatter this light throughout the rest of the building. Interior gardens, terraces, and pools not only add to the aesthetics, but contribute inviting areas for employee collaboration, and provide ecological services that help maintain quality of the interior environment.

Among the several distinctions awarded to the Genzyme Center is the vaunted Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification. The building was completed in November 2003, and is now on the elite list of 80 buildings worldwide with the highest LEED certification. You can read more about the Genzyme Center’s LEED profile here. What does it mean for a building to be LEED certified? While reducing fossil fuel consumption is an important consideration, there are several other characteristics evaluated, including:

• Sustainability of site location
• Water efficiency
• Energy and atmosphere (building sector energy use is 48% of the U.S. total: substantial opportunity for improvement here)
• Materials and resources
• Indoor environmental quality (low VOCs, occupants can control their environment)
  
• Location and linkages (how people will commute to this building: support for bicycle commuting, access to public transportation)
• Awareness and education (helping building users get the most from building features)
• Innovation and design process (designing the building as a whole system, not a collection of parts)
• Regional priority

In addition to capitalizing on natural light, the Genzyme Center utilizes a variety of other innovative techniques to cut down on energy consumption. The building is designed to exploit natural convection currents for heating and cooling. About a third of the exterior has a ‘ventilated double-facade that blocks solar gains in summer and captures solar gains in the winter.’ What was most impressive to me was the flexibility of the systems in the building. The building manager can try out new strategies for heating, cooling, lighting, etc. to adapt to changing conditions. This kind of flexibility makes possible the discovery of synergies between systems that enable even better energy efficiency than what was expected during building design. Building management for the Genzyme Center seems to be an ongoing optimization process. Right now people control the adaptation, but it seems to a be a perfect application for machine learning. Does anyone know of building systems that use machine learning or other algorithms to fine tune operations?

An obvious question LEED certification, and sustainable building design in general, is whether the additional cost for alternative building approaches is worth the investment. According to a report for the California Sustainable Building Task Force, an initial investment of an extra 2% of the building cost will yield more than ten times the initial investment of the life cycle of the building. In addition to energy, water, and other resource savings, companies that invest in LEED certified or other sustainable building practices reap the benefits of increased worker productivity. My tour of Genzyme Center this week convinced me of the reality of this last point.

Sustainable building practices may cost more up front, but are sound business decisions when a long-term perspective is maintained. Greener building design is not only the right thing to do for humanity and our world, but also for businesses.