Page 81 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

58 THE PRACTICE OF INTEGRATED DESIGN

and cost to get to high performance. In this project, his experience was quite
different.

Based on the Yale experience at least, it was clear to me that you really have to
modify the process at the outset. It’s not just us as designers and consultants but also
with owners. By the way, the builders were in on all of these sessions as well. They
attended all of the bi-weekly design sessions and were providing cost information
from the outset. The builder was a firm that wasn’t necessarily noted for building
high-performance buildings but they got into it and developed the whole process
along with us. They were pricing it as we went.

We just got there by making intelligent and original moves to mitigate how much
work the building ever has to do. The north-south, long-axis orientation of this build-
ing could not be more perfect, given the use and program in it. The way we devel-
oped the building envelope really worked to mitigate how hard the building has to
work to do anything. In retrospect, it was all about mitigating horsepower require-
ments and maximizing or optimizing what the natural world gives us. We really
sought to start out in unison with nature rather than working against it. We were able
to get 52 LEED points without doing a lot of extraordinary things, just by good
design. We used a displacement ventilation system, which is a very high-performance,
low energy use system to begin with, so it didn’t have to work as hard. The systems
often have to work less because of what we did with design—both the orientation
and the building envelope itself. I now have a new point of view and no longer
believe that you have to expend more money to get to LEED Platinum, and the proof
is in this building.

International Integrated Design:

The New York Times Building

Bruce Fowle led the design team at FXFOWLE Architects for the design of the
New York Times building (Fig. 3.6) in New York working with Renzo Piano
Building Workshop. Here’s his story about how integrated design is practiced on a
major new urban high-rise, with a strong collaboration between two very talented
design firms.*

The [New York Times Building] was a collaborative effort from start to finish. While
Renzo Piano was definitely the visionary for the project, both firms had equal roles in
carrying out the project’s design and in the execution of its construction. It wasn’t the
classic designer/executive architect relationship, as it was a project type that Piano’s
office was unfamiliar with and could not effectively design without our expertise and
local know-how.

*Interview with Bruce Fowle, February 2008.