Energy / People / Buildings: Making sustainable architecture work

Energy performance feedback is an essential tool in addressing the current climate crisis.

However, this is not simply another theoretical text about energy performance in buildings. This book is for anyone who wants to better understand how energy is used in buildings, and how to drive down operational energy use – whether you’re an architect, student, client, building services engineer, contractor, building operator or other stakeholder. Focusing on evidence from feedback on buildings in use, it explains what it takes to get them to perform as expected, as well as the reasons why they often fail.

Energy, People, Buildings draws extensively on the findings of studies, UK government-funded building performance evaluations and on original research into seven case studies from across the UK and abroad that have achieved exemplary energy use through building performance feedback.

Providing a clear roadmap to understanding aspects that impact building users’ comfort and satisfaction, it also outlines the factors behind energy use and how to track it across the life of a project to ensure that your building performs as intended.

Case studies include: the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool; Rocky Mountain Institute Innovation Center, Colorado; and Carrowbreck Meadow, Norwich.

Featured architects: AHMM, AHR, Architype, Hamson Barron Smith, Haworth Tompkins, Henning Larsen Architects and ZGF Architects.

Judit Kimpian is an architect and environmental policy expert. She teaches at UCL and chairs the Architects Council of Europe’s Sustainable Architecture Group.

Sofie Pelsmakers is an environmental architect, educator, and researcher in sustainable housing design and architecture at Tampere University, Finland, and is author of the Environmental Design Pocketbook.

 Hattie Hartman is a journalist and sustainability editor at the Architects’ Journal, London.