Tuesday, March 27, 2012

How can buildings enhance and protect occupant health and performance?


High Performance Office Building, designed by Symbiosis

Symbiosis Research Question of the Week : How can buildings enhance and protect occupant health and performance?

The environments people occupy have a significant, direct  effect on their health and well-being. The average person in the US and Europe spends around 90% of their time indoors. Current building environments frequently generate illnesses and negatively impact people's health, well-being, and work performance, through Sick Building Syndrome, other Building Related Illnesses, and non-stimulating environments. Poor air quality, toxic materials, and disconnect from natural stimuli such as natural daylight, plants, and local climate conditions are among the contributing factors. In addition, current research by the Biology and Built Environment Center indicates that typical mechanical ventilation strategies meant to improve air quality are having the opposite effect, removing the beneficial bacteria and matter (which generally originate in the natural environment) from the air, and replacing it with detrimental matterincluding human sweat, saliva, and VOC's. 

How can buildings be designed to enhance and protect occupant health and performance?

Symbiosis, in collaboration with Wageningen's environmental psychology ' Health and Society ' chair, is developing a building health performance evaluation tool and guidelines for designers.


Check back in for future results

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Symbiosis high performance design process published in book, Aesthetics of Sustainable Architecture


Symbiosis principal Giancarlo Mangone's book chapter describing his innovative, performance based design process , "Constructing Sensuous Ecologies : Looking beyond the energy + carbon efficiency arguments" published in the book, Aesthetics of Sustainable Architecture, edited by Sang Lee.


Now available for purchase on  amazon.com  and 010 publishers

Symbiosis joins The Green Collective biodiversity network

Symbiosis joins The Green Collective network to collaborate on developing solutions to sustain biodiversity at the building, urban, and national scale in The Netherlands.

Friday, March 2, 2012

How can buildings improve local biodiversity?

Symbiosis research question of the week : How can individual buildings be designed to improve local biodiversity while improving building and occupant performance?

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Symbiosis recognized for improving low income senior citizens living environment

Symbiosis' LEED Platinum senior citizen affordable housing project Adaptive Generations is now featured on the  Organic Architecture Guild  website as an exemplar sustainable project that integrates human and natural environments in order to improve the performance of the building and the lifestyles of the occupants.

Giancarlo Mangone to teach how to implement innovative, high performance design in Neapolis University, Cypress

Symbiosis founder and principal Giancarlo Mangone has been invited to teach several workshops at the Faculty of Construction Management of Neapolis University in Cypress in April. The workshops will focus on translating innovative performance concepts to building constructions and optimizing construction projects to comply with LEED, avoid risks, and maximize project performance.


Symbiosis tasked to improve performance of vacant Dutch office buildings

Symbiosis has been invited to join the Refill team by Deerns Mechanical Engineers to make existing, vacant office buildings in the Netherlands higher performing and more desirable in the commercial office market. Symbiosis' focus will be on developing strategies, design solutions, and performance evaluations that improve building and occupant performance, while reducing project operating costs. Specific strategies of investigation include the utilization of vegetation, hybrid microclimates, and microforests as integrated spatial infrastructure typologies and building program.