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  EnergyPeopleBuildings

book synopsis

Growing evidence about the performance gap, the disparity between expected and actual building performance, is seriously compromising the sustainable design agenda.  Energy, People, Buildings: Making sustainable architecture work, our book for RIBA (due in spring 2021), will explain how we can bridge the performance gap to ensure that buildings will stand the test of time.

The performance gap has many ramifications.  It impacts operational running costs due to increased energy use, as well as the environment due to increased carbon emissions.  Equally important but less often recognised, it effects indoor environmental comfort and occupant health and well-being.

Energy performance feedback is an essential tool in addressing the current climate crisis.

However, this is not simply another theoretical text about energy performance in buildings. This book is for anyone who wants to better understand how energy is used in buildings, and how to drive down operational energy use – whether you’re an architect, student, client, building services engineer, contractor, building operator or other stakeholder. Focusing on evidence from feedback on buildings in use, it explains what it takes to get them to perform as expected, as well as the reasons why they often fail.

Energy, People, Buildings draws extensively on the findings of studies, UK government-funded building performance evaluations and on original research into seven case studies from across the UK and abroad that have achieved exemplary energy use through building performance feedback.

Providing a clear roadmap to understanding aspects that impact building users’ comfort and satisfaction, it also outlines the factors behind energy use and how to track it across the life of a project to ensure that your building performs as intended.

Case studies include: the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool; Rocky Mountain Institute Innovation Center, Colorado; and Carrowbreck Meadow, Norwich.

Featured architects: AHMM, AHR, Architype, Hamson Barron Smith, Haworth Tompkins, Henning Larsen Architects and ZGF Architects.

Judit Kimpian, Hattie Hartman and Sofie Pelsmakers