It’s a Seismic Shift. We are Ready!
Sara Bayer, MAP’s Director of Sustainability, spoke at the NYSERDA Buildings of Excellence Round 3 Awards. Published here are her remarks.
Sara Bayer, AIA, CPHC, LEED AP speaking at the NYSERDA Buildings of Excellence Round 3 Awards
It’s a pleasure to be here celebrating this milestone in our journey toward a carbon neutral built environment.
In more than three decades, MAP has designed over 100 affordable housing developments, with more than 13,000 units. With a practice dedicated to design that improves the lives of others, sustainability has always been fundamental to our work.
As we say at MAP: “If it’s not sustainable, it’s not healthy, and if it’s not healthy, it’s not equitable.”
These issues are all intertwined. Public funders were early adopters of strategic sustainability requirements, allowing affordable housing to help lead the multifamily industry with the most energy efficient buildings.
Looking at the last 10 years of MAP’s projects, we’ve seen that the predicted energy use intensity of our new construction, affordable buildings, has consistently outpaced the progression of energy code. Since the adoption of passive house strategies and electrification in our typology, MAP is moving quickly towards a carbon neutral ready portfolio. We are currently working on 17 such buildings in design or construction, including eight past Buildings of Excellence Award winners.
This is a seismic shift, accelerated by programs like this competition. It is an atmosphere that has inspired us to consistently examine our portfolio as a whole and ask: how do we make all of our buildings perform like our best buildings? How do we confer the financial and health benefits of this type of architecture, to all of our projects?
One answer has been to embrace heat pump technology which is many times more efficient than combustion will ever be. Another is to truly embrace passive house building science and make use of performance metrics such as energy use intensity.
Our industry now has confidence in energy models. PH energy performance is much more reliable than energy modeling strategies of the past because it requires air tightness quality control and testing. Instead of contending with uncontrolled air flow, our engineers can now rely on virtually zero air infiltration in their load calculations allowing them to right size the equipment.
Rheingold Senior Residence, rendering by Nightnurse images.
Rheingold Senior Residence, one of our 1st round BoE winners. It was always going to be all-electric with ERVs, but we priced an add-alt for PH level, quality-controlled air tightness, and reduced mechanical sizing, and we found it was less than 1% difference in development cost. We are moving away from the idea that sustainability is only an additive process – adding insulation, adding solar, and instead, managing it as a balancing process – some things get added, and others get removed or reduced in size.
Quality control of the air barrier also allows us to underwrite to operating savings in a way we couldn’t before. Efficiency measures are no longer evaluated on a simple payback, but for their effect on the overall financial picture: which includes dramatically reduced utility costs, improved tenant satisfaction and health, and greater resiliency and durability.
Development teams have increased the width of their lenses for decision making, to include a much wider view of the life cycle impacts of our buildings. As more investors look to meet climate reporting goals and resiliency becomes more of an everyday concern for insurance companies, the cost calculations will continue to change.
Better occupant health is another differentiating feature in our carbon neutral multifamily buildings. This is due to the fact that our ventilation strategy is no longer exhaust only with the hope that enough fresh air makes its way in through leaky walls. Instead, it is a balanced supply and return system, that recovers energy and filters the supplied fresh air. This purposeful fresh air delivery confers numerous health benefits, keeping pollutants in check and reliably delivering proper oxygen levels.
When I started in architecture, the work that we aspired to, was about spatial experience through light and form. Now it’s also about the quality of the air, and the efficiency with which it is delivered.
The job of an architect has become more complex as we’ve accepted greater responsibility for energy performance, embodied carbon, healthy materials and more. But we are confident we can do this. We have matured technology and processes, won by years of persistence from dedicated stakeholders across the entire industry!
As regulations, incentives and investments push us to new standards, our work towards efficiency, will become more efficient. And that is the value of this Buildings of Excellence program and the work NYSERDA has done. Please join us in creating a thriving, regenerative world!