Characteristics of High Performance Buildings

"The overall goal is to produce buildings that take less from the earth and give more to people." -A Primer of Sustainable Building, The Rocky Mountain Institute

A High Performance Building is:

• Designed in a collaborative process involving designers, builders, facilities, personnel, campus decision makers and the building's eventual occupants
• Employs a holistic approach to design, which aims to maximize performance of the entire building rather than particular features or components
• Designed with a financial calculus that considers all costs over the life of the building (life cycle costs) rather than just the first cost of construction
• Comprehensively and continually monitored, throughout design, construction, and operation, to achieve optimal performance

And a High Performance Building:

is healthy and productive for students and professors, in that it provides:

• High levels of acoustic, thermal and visual comfort
• Large amounts of natural daylight
• Superior indoor air quality.

is cost-effective to operate and maintain, because its design employs:

• Energy analysis tools that optimize energy performance
• A life cycle cost approach that reduced the total costs of ownership
• A commissioning process that ensures the facility will operate in a manner consistent with design intent.

is environmental, because it integrates

• Energy conservation and renewable energy strategies
• High performance mechanical and lighting systems
• Environmentally responsive site planning
• Environmentally preferable materials and products
• Water-efficient design.

*Borrowed from the High Performance Campus Design Handbook http://www.njheps.org/projects/GDHandbook.pdf and Sustainable Building Industry Council's "High Performance School Buildings" http://www.psic.org/home/index.html

Click here to read about National High Performance Building Trends.