This is a report on the zero emissions building design charrette that took place on September 17. HOK and The Weidt Group participants in San Francisco, Toronto, St. Louis, Berkeley, Calif., and Minneapolis saved carbon emissions from air travel by using Cisco Telepresence Technology, Polyvision THUNDER Express, WebEx and HOK’s Advanced Collaboration Rooms to meet virtually.

The team designing the a zero carbon emissions office building has made lots of progress since my last ZEB post. With the final meeting fast-approaching and an affordable carbon-free solution on the horizon, it’s time to crank out some posts to catch you up on what they’ve been up to.

Finally, a Focus on the Building …

This is a report on the zero emissions building virtual design charrette that took place on August 26, 2009. HOK and The Weidt Group participants in San Francisco, Toronto, St. Louis and Minneapolis used Cisco Telepresence Technology, Polyvision THUNDER Express, WebEx and HOK’s Advanced Collaboration Rooms to communicate.

In this meeting The Weidt Group’s Chris Baker and Vinay Ghatti pushed the team closer to a zero emissions office building design by talking the group through a whopping 89-page Strategy Report describing the potential energy use, carbon emissions and cost implications of hundreds of specific energy conservation strategies.

The report documented the results of DOE-2 building simulations for each …

This is a report on the zero emissions building virtual design charrette that took place in HOK’s Advanced Collaboration Rooms in San Francisco, Toronto and St. Louis on 31 July 2009. Lots of video clips at the end!

This meeting began with a restating of the goal of designing a zero emissions building design that will reduce the energy requirements for a traditional St. Louis office building of 150,000-200,000 square feet by 70-80 percent. They will use on-site renewable energy sources to get the rest of the way to zero emissions.

Because energy conservation typically costs less than energy generation, the team is using off-the-shelf technologies to design a building that consumes 17-18 KTBUs …

The second zero emissions building design charrette took place July 23 in The Weidt Group’s naturally daylit offices in a Minneapolis suburb. The brainstorm team included five designers from each firm, with combined expertise in energy and daylighting modeling, architecture, engineering and integrated design. Click here to see the agenda.

The team began by restating its goal: To design a 150,000-200,000-square-foot, high-end speculative office building in St. Louis that is a zero emissions building (ZEB). The group also wants to document a process that could potentially change the way they design buildings.

HOK Sustainable Design Director Mary Ann Lazarus clarified the team’s definition of a zero emissions building: …

One of the challenges for the zero emissions office building design team will be to maximize use of daylighting. At last Thursday’s design charrette in The Weidt Group’s offices in Minnetonka, Minn., the team experienced a living lab of naturally lit space – an office that uses virtually no electric lights.

The Weidt Group’s general office area (no electric lights, north-facing windows):

“The key for getting the daylighting back into the space is the upper portion of glazing, the area above the ductwork,” says The Weidt Group energy analyst Chris Baker. “The higher the top of the window, the deeper you can get light into the space. The other key is …