Page 26 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

4 THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE PROJECTS

they needed to make themselves available to make decisions. We immediately
engaged in a process design exercise and brought in a team of consultants. First, we
decided that we had to meet every other week in New Haven with university repre-
sentatives who could make decisions at the table with us as we went. All of the prin-
cipals of the consultant teams, similarly, needed to be at these meetings so that there
was always the capacity to make decisions on all fronts in all of the meetings.
Second, we mapped out the university’s decision-making process and found out
when we would need to get in front of the officers and their design advisory com-
mittee (for review). It was all rapid fire, literally, with a lot of meetings.
In the bi-weekly meetings, we had in the room: Atelier Ten as environmental con-
sultants; ourselves as architects; John Morrison, partner of CVM, structural engi-
neers; one of the principals of BVH mechanical engineers; the landscape principal
at Andropogon; civil engineers from BVH and a variety of specialized consultants
along the way that we added as necessary, who would come in and out on a topical
basis. This often related to topics such as the development of the curtain wall and the
building envelope. We brought in a research team from our office as well, and a
number of them participated regularly in those meetings as well as in the develop-
ment of the environmental strategies. It was integrated not just across our team but
across the owner’s team as well, which is fairly unique. Normally we don’t design
with owners. We just bring materials to owners. This was so rapid fire that they were
in the room a lot while we were managing the development of this design process.
What happened was pretty interesting. When we got everybody in the room, the struc-
tural engineers would start to talk about mechanical systems. The mechanical engi-
neers would start to talk about structural systems. Even the landscape architect got
into it—discussing things inside the building. The [disciplinary] boundaries basically
evaporated in the discussions.

As an industry, usually we segregate these things. People don’t want to sit in a meet-
ing and hear another discipline talk. The mechanical engineers don’t want to sit
around for a structural coordination meeting, and vice-versa. We didn’t have the time
for that [conventional approach]. These were half-day meetings; everybody sat in the
same room. What transpired was pretty remarkable because they started to comment
on each other’s work. For instance, we had some of our best criticism about mechan-
ical systems from our structural engineer. It became a real broad vetting process.
Ideas bubbled up to the surface and were more thoroughly integrated as a result of
having everyone in the room.
For example, the building has a vertical displacement ventilation system [which is
placed in large vertical cabinets]. It’s the first one Yale has done. It’s completely mar-
ried to the structure of the building. All of the ventilation cabinets, the outlets for this
very low-velocity ventilation, are built around all of the structural columns. We did
that for the long-term flexibility of the building, [because] the structure is not going
anywhere and the displacement ventilation system needs to become a fixture in the
building. We didn’t want to compromise the flexibility of the building from the
owner’s perspective; it’s basically a loft building.