I truly appreciate some of the technologies used in his building and
they need to be employed with considerations.
Unknown to the architect is that in putting absorbent finishes on the
exterior of the building and allowing the interaction of solar
radiation with the absorbent exterior generates extreme heat. The
building isn't insulated for those temperatures so it heats the
inside of the building where we respond with energy use reacting to
symptoms.
The exterior of buildings is not supposed to employ absorbent
finishes as per code, we just couldn't see it before. Hard to imagine
but academia including architecture designs with temperature but is
blind to temperature. We use calculators and here is what we missed
in the calculator. Here is a link showing how solar radiation
interacts and causes the building to become an urban heat island.
http://www.thermoguy.com/urbanheat.html
In this BNET feature on Green business, architect Eric Corey Freed and one of his recent residential projects in Palo Alto is featured. Fun to watch is how Freed’s design puts wind and sun to work in cooling and warming the home while harvesting rainwater for the garden.
[video=342373-BNET]
