The founders of Pattern r+d, Sandeep Ahuja and Patrick Chopson are teaching a fifth year focus studio at Kennesaw State University to produce a comprehensive design solution for the Living Building Challenge (LBC) in coordination with industry partner, Perkins+Will.

Design process and education has changed. Multidisciplinary, evidence-based, performance-based methods are replacing rules of thumb and reliance on practice-based expertise as the necessary ingredients for good buildings. Nowhere is the demand for increased performance more apparent than in the Living Building Challenge (LBC), which requires net-zero energy and water, with unprecedented demands on the siting, materiality, equity, health, and beauty of the project. The LBC is setting the course for how we must build, and the industry is coming to terms with this.  For example, to incentivize adoption, a recent city pilot project in Seattle enables larger FARs, increased heights, and expedited processing for buildings that achieve the LBC designation. As a result of this legislation, the 5th year architectural focus studio at Kennesaw State University is using computation to design LBC buildings. Now comes the hard part — how? Traditional design processes and education is not equipped to prepare students for a world where they will be expected to design for such constraints.

Here is a sneak peak to the work from two of the students:

Sneak Peak Project 1 \ Andrew Greene:

Sneak Peak Project 2 \Kushal Patel :
Stay tuned for more to come!

www.patternarch.com – Performance Driven Design Decisions

About : Pattern r+d leads and executes analysis to help leverage and support design teams to design the highest degree of sustainable design and high performance buildings. We assist our clients to develop a holistic systems approach to design with a focus on energy, daylight, facade, comfort and computational design.