Sustainable Design

Current design and construction practices create buildings that use natural resources faster than they can be replenished and generate pollution faster than the biosphere can process. Sustainable design seeks to create space that has a markedly better indoor environmental quality for the occupants while designing buildings that do not overtax the earth's natural resources. Some examples of sustainable design features that can be incorporated into a building include:

  • Indoor Environmental Quality affects employee attraction & retention, productivity and absenteeism. Sustainable design improves Indoor Environmental Quality by:

    • Designing the building layout to provide maximum daylighting. Studies have shown that daylighting and other indoor environmental quality improvements can boost worker morale and productivity and reduce absenteeism.

    • Improving the ventilation effectiveness of the HVAC systems.

    • Specifying materials that are free from indoor pollutants such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

  • Design the project site to absorb storm water through the use of rain gardens and other techniques rather than discharging the water to the city storm water system. This benefits everyone by recharging the local aquifers and preventing pollutants from flowing into nearby streams or lakes.


At PLANNING Design Build, we routinely include no cost and low cost sustainable features in our designs and we will work to provide you with additional sustainable options depending on your interest in long-term operational savings as well as sustainability. We have spent considerable time researching and applying sustainable design concepts and have paid particular attention to the relative costs associated with those options. Our Integrated Planning ProcessSM is the perfect tool to ensure a holistic, sustainable design. The process provides regular checkpoints throughout the course of the project to ensure collaboration of ideas and integration of systems for maximum value.



 

TomoTherapy Headquarters Selected for Daylighting Study


PLANNING Design Build is proud that the TomoTherapy headquarters building was selected by The Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Insitute in New York for use in a technology transfer case study demonstrating effective daylighting strategies. To view the case study, please link to The Lighting Research website, by clicking on the button below. The study is located in the 'office' section.


 

PLANNING Sustainable Design Presentations


For further information on Sustainable Design - please view the following presentations.

    'Sustainable Design: What's the Bottom Line?'

    This presentation compares and evaluates the first cost differences between two nearly identical office buildings designed by PLANNING Design Build, Inc. of Madison, Wisconsin. The first building, a medical technology company headquarters, was completed in June 2002, while the second building was competitively bid in January 2003.

    'A Business Case for Sustainable Design'

    This presentation focuses on the business benefits for sustainable design for building owners/developers and for their building occupants.


    PLANNING Design Build, Inc.
    901 Deming Way
    Madison, Wisconsin 53717

    Phone: 608-836-8055
    Fax: 608-836-5818

    © All rights reserved. PLANNING Design Build, Inc. 2002.