Lessons learned from award-winning sustainable design projects

by Katie Daniel | April 8, 2016 2:54 pm

The American Institute of Architecture’s (AIA’s) Committee on the Environment (COTE) undertook in-depth research on nearly 200 Top Ten Award winners from the past 20 years to examine how the architecture community has evolved in regards to sustainable design practices.

“Lessons from the Leading Edge” reviewed a variety of performance measures, including energy efficiency, water conservation, and indoor environmental quality, to evaluate how these projects demonstrate COTE’s mission to “enhance the design quality and environmental performance of the built environment.”

“Top 10 winners are an extraordinary group of case studies from the leading edge of sustainable design over the past two decades,” said Lance Hosey, lead author of the report. “The projects have been studied and published widely as individual projects, but never as a group—until now. What we found is that top 10 winners are outpacing the industry by virtually every standard of performance, but they also exemplify the integration of design excellence and sustainable design.”

The report found many of the projects show top performance at very low or average costs, dispelling the misconception higher building performance requires higher costs. The projects range from small houses under 93 m² (1000 sf) to community master plans at millions of square meters. The average energy savings for these projects is 54 percent better than industry standards; in the past five years, average energy savings has improved to 65 percent. Average water reduction is 52 percent better than industry standards, and the majority of projects are located in urban areas, with less than one-fifth in rural regions.

To read the report, click here.[1]

Source URL: https://www.constructionspecifier.com/lessons-learned-from-award-winning-sustainable-design-projects/

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