Metropolis - May 2011

COMFORT ON DEMAND / Nash Hurley / Taylor Keep / Beau Trincia

Nash Hurley and Taylor Keep couldn’t have found a better
road test for their new firm, and its people-first approach,
than the Next Generation competition. “In any climate-
controlled building, at least 20 percent of the people inside
are not comfortable,” says Hurley, an architect who founded
Vital Environments last fall with Keep, a mechanical engineer.
(The San Francisco design firm offers architectural services
as well as mechanical and human engineering.) “And that
figure represents only the best-designed buildings. For most
structures, it’s much higher.”
A visit to the Los Angeles site last November helped them
understand the building’s current shortcomings—specifically,
its inability to provide comfort in a timely or economic fashion.
“The building managers receive several calls a week,” Keep
recalls. “On Monday it’s too hot. On Tuesday it’s too cold.
There are day functions, night functions, levels of moisture,
and levels of temperature. It’s not that these guys aren’t doing
their jobs. It’s just that the systems can’t respond quickly
enough to human demand.” Hurley and Keep also studied
work patterns at the GSA facility and other locations and
learned something crucial: most workers spend less than

40 percent of their workday at their desks or workstations.

Their response to this surprisingly flexible work pattern
was an equally adaptable climate-control system operated
by handheld devices that workers could set to their personal
preferences. That climate bubble would follow the worker
from cubicle to conference room to cafeteria. The cubicle
design includes dedicated outlets that power down to elim-
inate phantom load, and hand-and-foot-heating strips that
turn off when the user leaves. “This would have been science
fiction ten years ago,” Hurley says. “Today it’s easy. You can
have your office warm up like a car and drink your coffee in
a room that’s cooler.”
The Comfort on Demand system would also provide substan-
tial energy savings. With a slender floor plate, a massive solar
array, the low-energy personalized mechanical system, and
facade improvements, the team could reduce energy consump-
tion by 96 percent. But it’s not only about the numbers. “Every-
one talks about low-energy buildings,” Keep says. “Energy is
certainly precious. We don’t want to give it away, but the real
goal is to use it for high impact, to make people more comfort-
able and productive. It’s part of being an advanced society.”

A BUILDING CAN ONLY GET YOU SO FAR

According to this proposal, even the most
efficient, state-of-the-art systems can reduce
energy use only by about 75 percent. The
proposal achieves the remaining 25 percent
energy savings by using digital technology
to create individually controlled
work environments.

BES T GREEN-BUILDING PRACTICE
EMPOWERED PEOPLE
Massive
photovoltaic array
High-performance
facade
Slender
floor plate
Low-energy
mechanical system
GSA
BUILDING