Tools for Sustainable Design
RSS RMI News
- Building Sustainable Cities, Block by Block RMI partners with an innovative California non-profit to advance sustainable city blocks.
- Tools for Sustainable Design Download two tools that can help architects quickly evaluate the sustainability of their designs.
- Building Green the 'New Black' "Green" certified buildings outperform their conventional counterparts, a new study finds.
- RMI at Solar 2008 Tackling the challenges in scaling up solar and other energy sources
Each year, the U.S. building sector creates more than 50 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions. To address this issue effectively, designers need to assess the sustainability of their ideas from the earliest planning phases, when most of a building’s environmental impact is decided.
Rocky Mountain Institute, in conjunction with Vikram Sami of Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architecture, is happy to introduce two tools that can help architects quickly evaluate the sustainability of their designs.
Chhaya 2.0© is an Excel-based design tool that helps designers optimize glazing size and orientation, shading and natural ventilation to extend the period that the building can run passively. Using TMY2 weather data and a series of matrices, Chhaya’s interactive features allow users to see instantaneously the effects of changing window sizes, shades, and ventilation rates.
These features can give architects the information they need to assess and optimize a building’s heat gain and glare control, two factors that ultimately affect the need for cooling and electric lighting.
The shading information from Chhaya can be added to a Google SketchUp model and imported into various daylighting analysis programs such as AGI 32.
GreenFoot is an Excel-based tool that calculates a building’s carbon footprint as well as the amount of land necessary to offset the emissions. Future versions of the program will assess other building impacts and help architects evaluate deeper aspects of their design, such as how to balance water collection and consumption.
This site-specific analysis can work in conjunction with a modeling program such as Google SketchUp.
Download
GreenFoot: Mac | PC
Chhaya 2.0
Rocky Mountain Institute, in conjunction with Vikram Sami of Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architecture, is happy to introduce two tools that can help architects quickly evaluate the sustainability of their designs.
Chhaya 2.0© is an Excel-based design tool that helps designers optimize glazing size and orientation, shading and natural ventilation to extend the period that the building can run passively. Using TMY2 weather data and a series of matrices, Chhaya’s interactive features allow users to see instantaneously the effects of changing window sizes, shades, and ventilation rates.
These features can give architects the information they need to assess and optimize a building’s heat gain and glare control, two factors that ultimately affect the need for cooling and electric lighting.
The shading information from Chhaya can be added to a Google SketchUp model and imported into various daylighting analysis programs such as AGI 32.
GreenFoot is an Excel-based tool that calculates a building’s carbon footprint as well as the amount of land necessary to offset the emissions. Future versions of the program will assess other building impacts and help architects evaluate deeper aspects of their design, such as how to balance water collection and consumption.
This site-specific analysis can work in conjunction with a modeling program such as Google SketchUp.
Download
GreenFoot: Mac | PC
Chhaya 2.0