LEED + Sustainability

Tate Snyder Kimsey is a proponent of sustainable design. We are committed to designing buildings that are energy efficient, environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work. Additionally, our firm is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council, a national organization that promotes sustainable design.

Sustainable design is a holistic approach that equally respects environmental issues and economic factors, as well as social concerns. We believe that sustainable design can result in significant cost savings to the owner by reducing operating costs through energy efficiency and by increasing individual productivity and long-term occupant satisfaction. Our goal is to optimize the use of resources over the life cycle of a building by addressing the following five interrelated areas of design:

Building Form + Location
Building form and location can have major impacts on energy consumption. During design, we evaluate building orientation, surface area-to-volume ratio, maximum width of the building for daylighting, strategies to promote natural ventilation, shading opportunities from existing trees or buildings, and local micro-climate.

Building Envelope
The envelope of the building is also crucial to a facility’s overall energy performance. Factors to consider include the amount of insulation, area of glazing, solar and light transmittance of glazing, and external shading.

Materials of Construction
Whenever possible, we select re-used materials, recycled materials, recyclable materials, regionally procured materials, rapidly renewable materials, and wood that is responsibly harvested.

Systems and Equipment
Sustainable design efforts are optimized if building form, location, envelope, and construction materials are addressed and act in unison. Sustainable equipment options include high efficiency electric motors, properly sized chillers, variable speed drives, high efficiency lamps and electronic ballasts, and air side economizers. Daylighting and the use of full or partial natural ventilation should be evaluated. Alternative and renewable energy sources such as solar power, solar heated hot water, stored thermal energy, wind, and geothermal may also be investigated.

Controls
It is critical to the success of sustainability efforts that controls be designed concurrently with systems and equipment. Typical energy saving control systems which should be considered are occupancy sensors, daylight sensors, supply air temperature reset, optimal start for cooling and heating systems, software light switching systems, and elevator optimization programs.