Passive and active strategies for tempering the indoor environment come together in Tulane University’s new student building. The Lavin-Bernick Center was designed by Vincent James Associates Architects (VJAA) and completed in 2007, just 14 months after Hurricane Katrina.
Winner of an AIA architecture award, the center’s shading systems, day lighting strategies and low energy design combine to produce a building with a comfortable environment all year round.
Architects at VJAA retained a previous campus center constructed in 1954, stripping it back to its concrete foundations and adding 36,000 square feet. The new building is substantially different from its predecessor, which was inward-looking, compartmentalized and artificially cooled 100 percent of the time.
Vernacular Design for a New Orleans Context
Writing about New Orleans in their book entitled VJAA, the firm’s principles note the unique challenges of building in the city. Design measures are required to keep out hurricane force winds, deal with tropical heat and storms, and engineer for a city that sits below sea level.
The previous building at the university site was a “bubble”: a building that turned its back on the campus and used a peak load cooling system engineered for extreme temperature ranges. Designed as a deep plan building requiring artificial cooling, the original edifice also assumed users needed to be protected from a harsh climate.
VJAA’s research revealed that for about five months of the year, temperatures in New Orleans fall within a comfort zone that requires no artificial cooling . To address climatic conditions, the architects combined mechanical cooling for the hottest months with passive strategies that reference vernacular architecture found in the city's quartiers:
- Shading devices like overhanging rooftops, balconies and trellises.
- Permeable walls, or openings in facades that encourage air exchanges by natural ventilation; these are inspired by New Orleans courtyard design which punctuates building plans to bring in natural light and ventilation, and extends interior spaces into the outdoor environment.
- Landscaping that provides welcome shade and mitigates uncomfortable internal temperatures.
Sustainable Design in a Subtropical Climate
VJAA has updated vernacular approaches to tempering the interior environment of buildings in a subtropical climate like New Orleans. Three are worthy of merit:
Clerestory windows with overhands achieve three effects: they enhance lighting levels, inhibit solar heat gain, and naturally ventilate the building. These factors reduce energy loads commonly associated with overhead lighting to compensate for too little day lighting, or from mechanical cooling in response to solar heat gain and stuffy air.
Mixed Mode Cooling: In the summer the building is mechanically cooled but even this energy load is reduced by fans which move air, and other features like chilled water walls that lower ambient room temperatures. Skylights bring light into the bowels of the building while allowing heat to rise and dissipate through a stack effect.
Shading: The building’s louvered, exterior shading system is a contemporary twist on local domestic architecture’s shutters and canopies. Other methodologies deployed by the design team include fritted glass and perforated overhangs for creating variable shade depending on need.
A building management system from Siemens monitors climatic conditions indoors and out, and optimizes the mixed-mode system.
In a final nod to sustainable design, the architects’ decision to reuse the concrete shell of the original building saved $8 million in new materials and construction. Repurposing benefited the environment by diminishing construction waste which might otherwise have been diverted to landfills, and it saved on the amount of embodied energy used in the building.
Andree Iffrig - Andrée Iffrig LEED AP is a writer and award-winning graduate architect. She uses her broad background in environmental design and ...
