BIM in Small-Scale Sustainable Design

François Lévy, AIA, AIAA,is a registered Texas architect and researcher. He holds an MArch and an MS in architectural engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, where he has been lecturing since 1998. Mr. Lévy has been practicing architecture since 1993, and established his own firm in 1997. His architectural projects have attracted regional and national press, including Dwell magazine and HGTV. In addition to leading CAD and BIM seminars to professionals, his areas of research interest are sustainable architecture, cooling through passive ventilation, and space architecture.

Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix

Building Information Models and Modeling ix

The cost of buildings ix

See, change x

BIM for the rest of us xi

What this book is, and isn’t xii

A word on the case studies xiii

1 BIM and Sustainable Design 1

The emergence of Building Information Modeling 1

BIM for design 6

High-performance architecture 16

Case study: Moonrise Ranch 23

2 Design Software 29

BIM applications 29

Complementary software 38

Further reading 49

Case Study: Parameterized Hauer Curtain Wall 49

3 Site Analysis 55

Developing a site model 57

Analyzing the site 65

Case Study: House in Sonoma 74

4 Massing Analysis 79

Creating massing models 79

Perimeter/volume ratios: optimizing for envelope quantity 83

Confi rming desirable and undesirable views 85

Preliminary cost and feasibility analysis 87

Preliminary passive heating and cooling design data 89

Case Study: New High School 100

5 Solar Geometry and Daylighting 105

Shade from the sun 106

Daylighting 116

Case Study: Ross Street House 128

6 Passive Cooling 133

Appropriate responses for local climates 135

Rules of thumb and sizing guidelines for cooling strategies 139

Case Study: Hadlow College Rural Regeneration Centre 153

7 Passive Heating 159

Rules of thumb and sizing guidelines for heating strategies 160

Whole-building heat loss 162

Whole-building heat gain 170

Case Study: Battelle Darby Creek Environmental Center 177

8 Onsite Energy Systems 183

Solar photovoltaics 185

Azimuth and elevation 192

Solar thermal systems 192

Wind turbines 197

Case Study: Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design and Construction 200

9 Building Hydrology 205

Site design for water 206

Rainwater harvesting 209

Plumbing fi xture effi ciency 214

Sizing constructed wetlands 215

Gutter sizing 220

Case Study: Bee Ranch 221

10 Materials and Waste 225

Material takeoffs and cost calculations 225

Advanced framing 232

Sheet materials 237

Preliminary life cycle analysis 239

LEED material calculations 243

Case Study: Loblolly House 245

11 Collaboration 249

Imported backgrounds 249

Exporting fi les 251

Project coordination 264

Case Study: Paisano Senior Housing 272

Afterword 275

Bibliography and References 279

Index 283