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The Keller Center achieved Platinum certification. To use 35.9% less energy than permitted by code, the building employs a full menu of energy efficiency strategies including daylighting, LED lights, and radiant heating and cooling. On day one, 9% of the total building’s energy was provided by grant-funded rooftop photovoltaic panels, a system set to expand to provide nearly 18.5% of building energy. Additionally, rainwater captured on the roof will is stored and used to flush toilets as well as for landscape irrigation. This has the dual benefit of reducing burdens on the City’s combined sewer system, while saving 525,208 gallons of fresh water per year.

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Casa Querétaro is a multi-family affordable housing development on a uniquely shaped site bounded by the Metra Burlington Northern Santa Fe Rail Line. dbHMS provided LEED for Homes Green Rater and HERS Rater services for the project. The Green Rater assisted the project team in developing a preliminary LEED rating for the residential building (Silver level), and oversaw all of the LEED-related verification services on the project, including a two site visits for predrywall and final inspections, to confirm sustainable strategies inside and outside of the building. Specific tasks include verifying calculations, reviewing project drawings, reviewing manufacturer’s cut sheets, on-site verification of installed products and materials, overseeing energy-related performance testing, and verifying results of performance tests.

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The College of Engineering building at the University of Illinois is a 110,000 square foot building which is targeting LEED Gold Certification at a minimum, with a possibility of Platinum. A geothermal heat pump system supplies energy to the building’s hydronic heating and cooling loops in tandem with the campus district chilled water and steam systems. In the building, heating and cooling is provided by radiant panels in each space with a dedicated outdoor air system providing ventilation. The highly efficient system saves 43% on energy cost compared to the ASHRAE 90.1-2010 Appendix G baseline case.

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The Arkansas Arts Center is a gut-renovation and addition to an existing building in Little Rock, Arkansas. DataBased+ provided energy modeling and sustainability consulting services on the project. The unique geometry of the building required modeling simplifications to efficiently and accurately run repeated iterations of the energy model and load calculations. The building has several different use types with varied conditioning requirements including galleries, art storage, theater, restaurant, art classrooms and event spaces. The art display and storage spaces have strict humidity and temperature tolerances for long-term art preservation. The main event spaces are conditioned with in-slab radiant heating and cooling – one of few implementations of radiant cooling in a warm and humid climate – which provides enhanced comfort and reduced noise in these spaces. The building is targeting LEED Silver Certification.

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New City is an 8.5-acre, mixed-use development located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Its retail space includes Mariano’s Fresh Market, Dick’s Sporting Goods, ArcLight Cinemas, 40,000 sf of restaurant space, and Kings Bowl. Additionally, the development provides 200 units of multi-family residential living and a 1,100-space parking garage. A transit-oriented development, New City sits next to the North and Clybourn CTA Red Line station, adding convenience to its consumers.

In addition to the great access to transit, the retail buildings minimize energy use for the core and shell, giving retail tenants maximum flexibility. The residential tower reduced energy use by almost 25% and water use by 30% compared with a typical building. Through the combination of environmentally-friendly interior finishes and attention to contaminants during the construction process, the project delivers high quality indoor environments that also provide maximum controllability and access to daylight.

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Located on a prominent site in the Chinatown neighborhood of Chicago, the new 16,000 sq. ft. Chinatown Branch Library aims to create a new civic, educational and social hub for the surrounding community, providing a place of discovery and learning in the new digital age. The state-of-the-art library offers a unique blend of traditional library services and the cutting edge technology featured in 21st century libraries, as well as striking modern architecture and community specific design features. The library has a large central space for community gathering and a large, a glass-enclosed community room for events and programs and two meeting rooms for small group work. It features a large reading room, a YOUmedia digital media space for teens, an expanded community room, children's reading room, meeting space for community use, state of the art technology, Wi-Fi, and self-checkout stations.

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The Yannell Net Zero Energy Residence is a 3,000 sq. ft. single family home in Chicago that was designed with a goal of building a “net zero energy” house. The home produces more energy than it uses during the course of a year. The project involves the use of passive solar systems, a geothermal system, natural ventilation, solar thermal for domestic hot water and heating systems, and photovoltaics for generating on-site power. All systems for the building were incorporated into a complex energy model with several iterations to determine the most efficient building configuration. The project has achieved a LEED for Homes Platinum rating.

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This project is the implementation of a winning design competition submittal for a housing and library complex, consisting of a two-story, 16,000-square-foot library, with four floors of affordable apartments for seniors above (6 stories total). The library space will include community meeting rooms, children’s area, Youth Media, and other programming spaces. The ground floor will also include a residential entrance and property management office for the residential floors above.

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Bringing this renewable structure up to modern standards of performance and safety presented a number of challenges for the design team. Architectural features such as vaulted cathedral ceilings required careful design and implementation. dbHMS developed a design that included the near first use of chilled beams at The University of Chicago. The building consolidated the educational program on the west and the administrative offices on the east, allowing the load and airflow distribution to be uniform throughout each wing. The building is served by campus steam and chilled water systems.

The heating and cooling of the chapel presented a unique design opportunity. The conditioning of a historic space requires systems that provide a balance of efficient airflow delivery, while maintaining the appropriate aesthetics. The solution that was developed included an analysis of computational fluid dynamics to optimize an airflow delivery method at select areas in the cha pel, ensuring adequate cooling and heating throughout the space.

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The new, one-story 7,085 sq. ft. shelter is a state-of-the-art facility comprised of open office, cage-free cat areas, adoption areas, and support spaces. It is organized around a central landscaped courtyard for maximum daylight and access for all shelter uses—visually and physically—to nature. It features low-VOC, recycled and regional content finishes, high-albedo paving and roofing, and native landscaping. It also boasts a very thorough and well-designed list of energy-saving and energy-producing features through the careful integration of building systems.

An integrated building automation system with occupancy sensors is used to control the HVAC system and lighting in both cat and people spaces. Additionally, this system monitors the building energy consumption by end-use including HVAC, plug loads, lighting, and hot water. Data from the system is displayed at an energy dashboard in the lobby. It is not only r ecorded for building calibration, but for daily course-correction of energy use by building occupants. All of these demand-reducing features were critical to achieving a high-performance building and receiving a LEED NCv2009 Platinum rating.