Welcome to the Q4 2024 Integrated Design Lab Newsletter.
Each quarter, we’ll deliver updates and highlights of the transformative work accomplished by our Integrated Design Lab (IDL) network partners.
University of Idaho IDL
UI IDL Director, Damon Woods, is teaching an environmental building performance course that emphasizes energy performance and occupant experience in buildings. Students will learn to calculate the energy use intensity (EUI) of buildings and how to adhere to energy codes and certifications such as LEED. Additionally, students will calculate the return on investment of energy efficiency upgrades for lighting and HVAC systems based on real-world data, and use energy models to make design decisions that enhance indoor environmental quality. The course incorporates materials and case studies from BetterBricks with modules on very high efficiency dedicated outside air systems (very high efficiency DOAS) and luminaire level lighting controls (LLLC).
The UI IDL is using Residential Building Stock Assessment (RBSA) data to model the impacts of adjusting to International Energy Conservation Code 2024. The analysis looks at four regions in Idaho, each with a different set of utility providers, and uses January 2025 tariffs to estimate annual bills and savings, which vary by location. For example, improving the wall insulation from R-22 batts (the current baseline) to an R-20 batt with R5 continuous layer would save a Coeur d’Alene home about $15 a year, but could save a household in Salmon, Idaho, over $95 a year due to differences in climate and fuel types.
MSU IDL Director, Jaya Mukhopadhyay, collaborated with AIA Montana to refine the framework for the Energy in Design Award and align it with the organization’s goals of promoting high-performance architecture. This process involved developing clear evaluation criteria, refining submission requirements, creating resources to guide applicants through the process, streamlining the award template, and incorporating key performance metrics for energy efficiency and design innovation.
Matt Skuntz presented the very high efficiency DOAS high-performance HVAC system design and best practices at two Big Sky Chapter ASHRAE Lunch and Learn events attended by ASHRAE members and other HVAC professionals.
The UO IDL recently held anopen house tour of the full-scale mock-up of the first mass timber modular housing prototype that the lab built last year. The two-story thermally and seismically resilient house is built almost entirely from 2- and 3-inch prefabricated mass plywood panels (MPP) that allow for precise prefabrication and quick assembly.
UO IDL members Siobhan Rockcastle and Alen Mahic are in the finishing stages of a $20,000 AIA Upjohn Grant supporting the development of a circadian design guide for existing buildings. Soon available for free, the design guide features a decision tree and quantitative analysis of the impacts of surface treatment, façade design, and other indoor retrofit options to promote eye-level light exposure from daylight. The team is also in the final stage of a journal article that presents a novel circadian design metric to quantify annual performance as a complement to sDA in LEED v4. This article includes a quantitative analysis of potential energy savings that can be achieved by promoting daylight to enhance indoor health conditions during daytime occupancy.
Figure 1: The figure above shows the annual lighting energy needed to supplement times when daylight alone is not enough to meet circadian exposure needs. The mock-up office model includes 16 workstations and individualized light therapy lamps. The lighting and energy simulations are iterated by three levels of increasing material reflectance specifications and window-to-wall ratios.
UO IDL members Siobhan Rockcastle and Kyuho Ahn were awarded a $40,000 ARS Tallwood Design grant to study the impacts of surface finishes on lighting design and performance in mass timber buildings. The research team is specifically interested in how these decisions impact design coordination with electrical and HVAC systems that promote energy-efficient indoor comfort. The interviews will be followed by a human-factors experiment in office, healthcare, and residential spaces to collect perceptions of lighting performance under a variety of surface treatments and exposed/encased lighting and mechanical solutions. The team hopes to provide guidance to design professionals regarding the range of options available and their potential impacts on cost, performance, and energy savings.
Over the past six months, Siobhan Rockcastle has presented on LLLC through webinars and lectures in Germany. This includes a webinar to the scientific community at the Technical University of Munich, a lecture module on lighting design and performance for undergraduate architecture students, and a lunch and learn for lab staff at the Chair of Climate Responsive Building Design, also at the Technical University of Munich.
In Q4, the lab has been performing infiltration testing using a calibrated blower door to pressurize/depressurize a mock-up space with a cross-laminated timber (CLT) exterior façade and interior partitions. While the CLT panels provided the expected resistance from infiltration, this study is focused on joints and specified connection types between the panels that were previously observed to provide inconsistent performance in an existing all-wood mass timber building in Portland, Oregon (see Figure 1).
Figure 2: Typical diagram of all-wood construction evaluated in field pressurization tests.
The testing involves a series of common panel-to-panel joint designs and construction techniques (i.e., tolerances, sealant, weather barrier) for all-wood mass timber façades (CLT and MPP) in a lab setting, employing applicable ASTM standards for infiltration testing. The results, expected to be finalized this quarter, will yield empirical data for design and construction teams detailing mass timber building enclosures.
The photos above show the blower door test chamber at the Oregon State University A.A. Red Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Lab.
UW IDL Co-Director Heather Burpee presented snapshots of LLLC and very high efficiency DOAS to several prominent architecture design firms, directing attendees to BetterBricks resources for more information.
Heather Burpee and lab member Teresa Moroseos interviewed users of the Washington State Energy Code Commercial Webtool to gather information on user perspectives of code-related tools and decision-making processes. To NEEA, the Washington Department of Commerce, and the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, the lab presented their findings, including common themes, potential gaps, and recommendations for future tool development.
UW IDL Co-Director Chris Meek and Teresa Moroseos worked with AIA Seattle to administer and provide technical support for the 2024 Energy in Design Award, including technical review and quality assurance of all 118 award submissions. At the ceremony in November, University of Washington’s Founder’s Hall, Foster School of Business, was selected for the Energy in Design Award. Chris Meek also worked with the Montana State IDL and AIA Montana to help initiate a similar Award in their AIA Chapter.
Chris Meek and Heather Burpee interviewed lighting experts to better understand current and future trends in technologies, practices, and implementation of lighting systems. They also visited several buildings with LLLC lighting systems to better understand operational benefits and lessons learned. In December 2024, the lab presented this work to BetterBricks's LLLC team.
To help realize energy-efficient buildings, the lab supports design teams with technical guidance for goal setting and strategy selection. For example, the UW IDL partnered with Integrus Architecture on a project at Seattle’s Aki Kurose Middle School that combines exemplary façade performance, advanced lighting controls, and high-efficiency heat recovery/heat pumps to deliver exceptional energy performance. This work includes creating case studies that showcase how designers of ultra-efficient buildings use peak-load analysis as part of an integrated design process that achieves extraordinary levels of energy efficiency while meeting budgetary constraints.
Heather Burpee collaborated with Mazzetti and DIALOG to co-author thea design guide for hospital buildings for ASHRAE and the American Society of Healthcare Engineers (ASHE). She has presented this material across the country, including at ASHE’s Planning Design and Construction (PDC) conference and the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) conference.
For the Pacific Northwest Building Training Assessment Center (PNW BTAC) project, the lab was awarded a grant through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the U.S. DOE. The PNW BTAC aims to fill two market gaps in building performance improvements: 1) a trained workforce, and 2) access to benchmarking and strategic roadmaps.
The lab is working with the UW's Life Cycle Lab on a four-year project funded by ARPA-E to develop a comprehensive life cycle analysis (LCA) framework and package of tools that can be used in whole-building LCA analysis.
The WSU IDL continues its work on an ALS study that includes collecting the lived experiences of those afflicted with the disease by interviewing patients, families, caregivers, and clinicians across the country. Initial findings point to the need for design retrofit best practices that reflect rapidly changing demographics related to aging, disability, and neurodegenerative disease. Outcomes of this study include student engagement in disability design, recommendations to change design codes and standards that support this community, and a better understanding of the true emotional and mental impacts of our built environment.
The Hydraulic Institute awarded the WSU School of Design and Construction and the WSU IDL with their inaugural Excellence in Education Award, recognizing the lab’s educational content module developed using professional-level resources from HI University(formerly Pump Systems Matter). The lab’s research project manager, Shelby Ruiz, accepted the award at their annual conference.
WSU IDL Director, Julia Day, is co-leading an international research network that is studying
building design, operation, and energy use to ensure that buildings are resilient, energy efficient, and comfortable. This work increasingly focuses on occupant behavior, including purchasing decisions and the ways people interact with buildings and one another.
