INDUSTRIAL FACILITY TURNS TO THE ARTS

In 1951, Skidmore Owings & Merrrill designed a Greyhound Bus maintenance facility in an industrial area of San Francisco. Nearly 50 years later, the San Francisco firm of Tanner Leddy Maytum Stacey Architects has converted it into an award-winning, energy-efficient environment for a progressive design school, the California College of Arts and Crafts.

DOING WELL BY DOING GOOD

California's Oakland Administration Building, designed by the Denver firm of Fentress Bradburn Architects has been the focus of an experiment with performance-based fee contracting. The idea is to reward architects for meeting unusually high energy goals. Building owners are willing to offer this because they will pay less for energy in the long run. Architects respond by spending more time in schematic design, when early decisions can have profound effects on future energy consumption.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN DESIGN AND ENERGY ENGINEERING

Architects want the ability to easily and inexpensively predict the energy performance of a building while it is still in the schematic phase of design. And their clients want more accurate estimates of what it will cost to operate the new building. New XML-based energy analysis software built into computer-aided design tools will soon make this "wishware" a practical reality.