Low energy architecture for a severe US climate: design and evaluation of a hybrid ventilation strategy

This paper presents the novel hybrid ventilation strategy developed by Lomas for the Judson College Library and Faculty building, located near Chicago, USA. The project was won against a short list of 12 competition entrants drawn from a total of 85 submissions; Lomas was a member of the competition team. He was the lead author of this paper and headed the environmental design and evaluation work, co-authors Cook and Fiala conducted simulation analyses. A companion paper, for which Lomas was the lead writer and corresponding author, ‘Short CA and Lomas KJ, Exploiting a hybrid environmental design strategy in a US continental climate, Building Research and Information, Vol 35, No 2, pp 119-143, (2007)’: describes the ventilation strategy in the context of the architecture; elucidates the ventilation control strategy devised by Lomas; and presents the projected energy savings. The building’s design resulted in the awarding of a number of prestigious grants (see RA5 Esteem). The research reported in this paper, and the research for the SSEES building (Lomas Output 1), won the RIBA President’s Awards for Research, gold medal, in 2007; the work was submitted by Short and Associates (the IESD is ineligible for this competition)