Designing for Flexibility: Creating the New FLEX Laboratory at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for Studying the Next Generation of Building Efficiency Technologies
Karen Cribbins-Kuklin, AIA, Anshen+Allen
Eric Soladay, P.E., Integral Group
FLEX will consist of building system test facilities located in new and existing structures at the Berkeley Laboratory. Staff at the facility will conduct focused research or product development on single components or whole building systems integration. Staff will be able to replace any building system such as exterior building envelopes, windows and shading systems, lights, HVAC, energy control systems, roofs and skylights, or interior components such as furniture, partitions, and raised floors.
Optimizing the transparent elements in the building envelope to provide view and daylight, but minimizing winter heat loss as well as summer solar gain and glare, is a complex challenge. More stringent codes are limiting, but owners want large view windows. Dynamic solutions, such as smart glass, motorized shades and blinds, and daylight redirecting systems, might help, but there is enormous uncertainty in the actual performance of these dynamic systems.
No one wants unproven solutions, but accurate field data are difficult to find. What do owners, designers, engineers, and manufacturers need to create smart and responsive façade and daylighting systems capable of delivering net-zero energy performance, while minimizing peak cooling, maintaining view and providing visual and thermal comfort? One of the many areas of study to be conducted at FLEX will address these issues and provide valuable field data, in controlled conditions, between advanced facades and their integration with building systems.
Radiant cooling, chilled beams, displacement ventilation, and underfloor air distribution systems pose tremendous potential to lower cooling energy use and deliver thermal comfort. However, adoption of these technologies has largely been limited to new construction applications in which thermal loads can be lowered and controlled through building envelope and interior lighting designs. These systems' capacity and effectiveness in meeting thermal load and comfort requirements of perimeter spaces is a result of their interactions with the building façade and interior loads from lighting and other devices. Understanding how these elements affect system performance will illuminate opportunities to guide product, system, and controls design, and will improve product effectiveness at meeting load requirements for both retrofit and new construction applications.
FLEX offers a unique opportunity for industry and researchers to collaboratively solve "stretch" problems of this nature. Consider the challenge of radiant cooling panels and their interactions with convection from various façade types; FLEX provides a path to solutions that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
Biographies:
Karen Cribbins-Kuklin is a project director in Stantec's San Francisco office. Ms. Cribbins-Kuklin has more than 25 years of experience leading design teams for many complex academic research facilities. Her clients include Stanford University, University of British Columbia, University of Utah, Novartis, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and seven University of California campuses. Ms. Cribbins-Kuklin has a bachelor's of architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Eric Soladay is an innovative, collaborative, and goal-oriented mechanical engineer responsible for the procurement, management, and design of building engineering system projects. With a focus on sustainable and efficient systems, and cost- and maintenance-conscious designs, Mr. Soladay brings a calm and reliable creativity to the art of engineering the built environment. As associate principal and science and technology team manager, Mr. Soladay is responsible for the design of critical environment projects. As project manager and mechanical engineer of record at Integral Group, Mr. Soladay has led several significant projects, including the first LEED® Platinum certified retrofit of a historical laboratory building for the Linde+Robinson Laboratory at Caltech, the most energy efficient data center in North America with a power usage effectiveness of 1.05 for the Energy Systems Integration Facility at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the net zero energy headquarters building for the Packard Foundation.