Date: February 28, 2019

Time: 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Location: Maeder Hall

Vivian Loftness, of Carnegie Mellon University, discussed “Humans and Nature in the Loop: Integrating occupants & natural conditioning into high performance buildings” as part of the 2018/2019 Highlight Seminar Series.

ABSTRACT
Post Occupancy Evaluation plus Measurements (POE+M) has revealed that thermal, visual, acoustic and even air quality standards derived through controlled experimentation alone does not ensure comfort or health in buildings. Introducing human input into environmental standards and into user centric controls is critically needed for a sustainable future. For over a decade, CMU’s Center for Building Performance & Diagnostics has been gathering POE+M data from over 1500 workstations around the world and testing the benefits on innovative environmental control systems. The separation of ambient and task conditioning, the provision of task controls through the ‘Internet of Things’, the introduction of occupant voting and bio-signal inputs into ambient and task set-points, offers major gains in comfort, task performance, energy savings, as well as health and wellness. Moreover, Triple Bottom Line cost benefit analysis will make these investments an economic imperative for a truly sustainable future.

BIO
Vivian Loftness, FAIA, is a University Professor and Paul Mellon Chair in Architecture and served a decade as Head of the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon. With 40 years of industry and government funding, she is a key member of CMU’s leadership in sustainability research and education, writing extensively on the environmental performance of integrated systems and their impacts on human health and productivity. The senior editor of the Springer Reference Encyclopedia Sustainable Built Environments, she has served on the Board of Directors for the National Academy of Science’s Buildings and Infrastructure Council, the USGBC, and AIACOTE, earning recognition as a LEED Fellow, Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, and one of 13 Stars of Building Science by the UK Building Research Establishment. She has been honored as Hanley Award nominee for Vision and Leadership in Sustainability, received the 2015 Medal of Distinction from AIA Pennsylvania, and the 2018 NESEA Professional Leadership Award. Vivian Loftness has a Bachelors of Science and a Masters of Architecture from MIT.

The 2018/2019 Highlight Seminars Series are held on Thursdays from 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. in Maeder Hall at the Andlinger Center. Lunch will be served at 12:00 noon in the auditorium lobby of Maeder Hall.