ARCHITECTURE: Total Building Performance.

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Organization: Masters student, Architecture, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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Message-ID: <sfQOcLq00Uh7Q7=I9v@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 18:43:19 -0500
From: Robert Courson <rc4x+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: More on Total Building Performance
Lines: 48


Think of the guidelines as a grid with their corresponding impact on the
occupants and owners.

Psychological Physiological
Sociological Economical
Building Integrity
Thermal Comfort
Acoustic Comfort
Air Quality
Visual Quality
Spatial Quality


The quality of a building should be judged by how well these mandates
are satisfied in this broad spectrum. A major key to achieving these
goals is(according to the research) a more team oriented, cross
profession design process.

For example, take air quality in an office setting. Traditionally(in
America at least), this is generally the province of the mechanical
engineer. However, numerous factors that affect indoor air quality are
in someone elses domain. (e.g outgassing of paints or carpet glues in
the interior designers area) In today's market most of these types of
problems are "discovered" after occupancy and are exponentially more
expensive to "correct" than if they were taken into account during the
desing process.

Obviously this design process would me more costly up front. However,
since the costs for design and construction of most of todays building
are less that 3% of the total life span costs(again CMU research), it IS
smart economically.

This explanation is REALLY brief so...
For more info on this subject try

The Systems Integration Handbook, R.Rush, 1986
The work of the ABSIC here at CMU(Dept of Architecture)
The work of ASTM Commitee E-06
e-mail me with specific ?s and I'll try to answer them

Anyway, Buildings designed with these ideas or similar ones in mind are
the types I am searching for. Thanks again for an help you can provide.


Robbe Courson
Carnegie Mellon Univ.
rc4x@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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