Corporate Overview
GreenWorks Studio is dedicated to developing and applying innovative solutions in sustainable design and construction. Since 2002, we have provided services for more than 50 projects, totaling over ten million square feet, including one LEED Platinum-certified building and one of the first CHPS (Collaborative For High Performance Schools) showcase schools. Our staff includes licensed architects and engineers, and more than 45 LEED accredited professionals. We work with a wide range of clients in both the public and private sectors and also serve as consultants to architects and construction management teams.
Greenworks Studio Low Energy Building Design, Analysis and Implementation Services;
If you are looking for high performance building design we can help you chart your course. Greenworks Studio is a leading provider of sustainable building services. We use an integrated bioclimatic design approach, coordinated with the work processes of our clients, to push the boundaries of building performance in the areas of daylighting, thermal performance, human comfort, energy efficiency and on-site renewables.
We have extensive experience in all areas of sustainable building design including the integrated design process, building performance simulation, lifecycle costing, specifications, document review, commissioning and long term performance monitoring. Our team makes extensive use of advanced software packages to facilitate and guide the integrated design process including Autocad Revit, EnergyPlus, DesignBuildier, eQuest, EnergyPro, BeOpt, Ecotect, Radiance and Daysim.
Designing buildings which actually deliver aggressive energy savings requires the innovation from all sectors across building industry. To address these challenges, Greenworks Studio has developed strategic alliances with other professional environmental, architecture and engineering firms at the forefront of the industry; and, with academics working in building science, physics, analysis, and technology.
Our services can be tailored to integrate with any project delivery process to make sure the design team and the client can make informed design decisions backup up by rigorous analysis and previous project experience
Conceptual Design
•Climate Analysis: Evaluation of the hourly, daily, monthly and seasonal climatic patterns, microclimate impacts and climate change predictions to determine opportunities for low energy design which harvest site resources such as natural ventilation, free cooling, geothermal and passive solar measures.
•Energy Benchmarking: Collection and analysis of utility data from existing buildings, comparison against industry benchmarking databases, preliminary shoebox energy modeling.
•Performance Goals: Collaborative goal setting for building performance such as energy consumption, daylighting, thermal comfort, on-site generation, ventilation, cost and maintenance.
•Baseline Energy Program: Consult with the users and program consultant(s); carry out an energy-use oriented space program analysis and construct profiles of occupant, lighting, plug and process loads based on realistic schedules and densities.
•Preliminary Building Simulation: Develop simplified building energy consumption model for selected alternative schemes to demonstrate the differences in energy loads for buildings of different massing and different types of construction. Glazing, shading and daylighting factors will be assumed to be constant for these comparisons.
•Sustainable Design Charrette: Organization and facilitation of multi-disciplinary charrettes to share results of pre-schematic design analysis, discuss design concepts, deliverables and collaboration plan.
Schematic Design
•Solar/Shading Analysis: Study the impact of shading from adjacent structures and vegetation, solar exposure and strategies to manage heat gain and access to daylight. Included is solar access analysis for on-site renewable energy systems.
•Daylight Simulation: Daylight simulation of representative spaces to assess daylight conditions (i.e., daylight factor and daylight autonomy) and the visual comfort conditions determined by orientation and room layout, façade optimization such as external shading, daylight redirection systems and automated controls for shading and daylighting.
•Building Envelope Performance: Use of dynamic thermal simulation tools to assess the thermal characteristics of the proposed building envelope including the identification of strategies to improve performance and assessment of the impact on human comfort, energy consumption and cost.
•Internal Load Reduction: Construct profiles of occupant, lighting, plug and process loads based on realistic schedules and densities. Identify opportunities to reduce or shift loads to minimize direct and indirect energy consumption.
•Thermal Comfort Analysis: Use of hourly simulation and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to assess opportunities to improve thermal comfort and where feasible incorporate the use of adaptive comfort approaches.
•Natural Ventilation Analysis: Use of bulk airflow and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to analyze airflow profiles, evaluate alternative airflow systems and develop system control strategies.
•High Efficiency Technologies: Evaluate potential energy savings through the use of advanced technologies in the areas of thermal storage, displacement ventilation, radiant heating and cooling systems, high efficacy lighting, plug load controls and other technologies compatible with site and program specific requirements.
•Whole building Energy Consumption: Using whole building energy models, the interactive effects of alternative designs, technologies and operational profiles are studied to determine the best approach for achieving the project’s performance goals.
•On-site Renewable Energy Systems: Select potential technologies suited to site and program requirements, simulate performance, develop recommendations for sizing and specifications.
•Cost Benefit Analysis: Analyze return on investment and net present value of alternative design decisions; prioritize greatest added long term value relative to construction costs; life cycle cost analysis.
Design Development and Construction Documents
•Cost Benefit Analysis: Analyze return on investment and net present value of alternative design decisions; prioritize greatest added long term value relative to construction costs; life cycle cost analysis.
•System Integration: Integrate commissioning, measurement and verification services to ensure that project performance can be fully realized. GWS works with the Building Management Systems (BMS) systems Analysts to corroborate the project’s design energy goals and operations and maintenance capabilities.
•Verification / Peer Review: Review Design Development of all passive systems such as windows and glazing systems, shading, daylighting, the natural ventilation system and the integration of daylight controls with the electric lighting systems.
Post Construction
•Commissioning / Retrocommissioning: Confirm that the building's energy related systems are performing as intended by performance goals for the project; and, recommend any corrective improvement measures.
•Measurement and Verification: Ongoing measurement of building systems to allow identification of performance problems and provide benchmarking performance metrics. Greenworks Studio works with building management systems programming to tune the systems to meet or exceed performance projections created in early schematic analysis.