15 the owner exceeds any design team's project fee.2 If there is so much value to be captured from effective building design/HVAC integration, what factors prevent this from happening? Low levels of intellectual engagement between architects and HVAC engineers remain a contributing factor.3 Many architects lack an interest in and understanding of the ever-increasing number of HVAC solutions available to them. It does not help that the field indulges in technical jargon as demonstrated by the system comparison at the beginning of this chapter. The resulting communication vacuum can delay HVAC discussions to the last possible moment (Fig 1.4). Relationships take time to build which makes it natural for "new" team members to promote standard, low risk solutions. With first and operational costs being the guiding performance metric for most project decisions, the cheapest solution will prevail unless client and design team agree on either binding performance targets or a project-internal price of carbon to align cost and greenhouse gas emission (GHG) goals.4 In the authors' Sustainable Design Lab at MIT, architects, engineers and programmers work together every day to develop design workflows for high performance buildings and neighborhoods (Fig 1.2). In the same spirit, we wrote this digital guidebook to promote a more informed, earlier dialogue between architects and engineers as well as to introduce design professionals and architecture students to the elusive world of HVAC system design. We came up with a three-step decision framework to identify suitable HVAC system solutions for a given project based on a set of deliberate choices regarding: 1. Ventilation type 2. Fuel sources 3. Heat delivery medium The framework can be used from the earliest design phases onwards and is encoded in the interactive HVAC System Selector form, that is linked on the bottom right of this screen. Based on a series of questions, the form helps the reader to identify HVAC systems that may be suitable for their project. These solutions are described in part two of this book. We will grow the number of systems over time with the intent to ultimately span the gamut of designs commonly found in mid-sized commercial buildings across North America. To accomplish this goal, we hereby solicit your input. Please share photos and descriptions of relevant case study buildings for consideration for this book at hvac@BuildingTechnologyPress.com. For illustrative purposes, each system in part two is applied to the same building, the Medium Office Boston from the Climate-Driven Design I textbook (Fig 1.5).5 The three story building has a conditioned floor area of 4935m2 (53,112ft2) and is mostly based on the U.S. Department of Energy‘s (DOE) commercial prototype building of the same name.6 Detailed
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