The site I have chosen for my exhibition center is just south of the Eldorado National Forest in Northern California. It is surrounded by trees, mountains, and even has a view of Big Silver Creek. The site itself is indicated by the blue dot in the photograph below, with the coordinates 38°52'01"N , 120°23'13"W.
Eldorado National Forest is a popular area for recreational activity. The plot I have chosen is surrounded by popular campsites and beaches often visited in the busier months.
I plan on building a 35,000 square foot bouldering (climbing) facility just south of the Eldorado National Forest. The building itself will be 200ft x 175 ft, and I aim to make it feel like bouldering outside, but in an enclosed space. The design of the climbing center will work together with these established campgrounds, creek, and beaches to encourage recreational outdoor activities. This will allow visitors to get a taste of relaxing on the beach and climbing a mountain all in one place!
The area is surrounded by hills, but the plot is a flat, raised surface located in the middle of everything!
The actual plot can be indicated by the yellow box that was measured within the Google Earth application.
Below is the psychometric chart for the location of the site.
The local climate of this area is known to be similar to that of Lake Tahoe, because the forest is located to the southwest of the lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada. The climate is described as a mediterranean type climate. The forest has warm, dry summers and cold, wet winters. I chose this area because of the strong sun in the summer and winter, as well as the low humidity within the state of California. The first chart tells that a thermal mass wall, perhaps a water wall would be useful in terms of passive heating and cooling (indicated in the orange section). There is relatively low winds and higher energy is needed in the hotter months in order to keep the building cool. The best design strategies for my location are sun shading of windows, heating, internal heat gain, and passive solar direct gain (low mass). Therefore, I want to include a thermal mass wall, sun shading of the windows, using internal heat gain methods, and passive heating. I also want to include a lot of natural light that can relate to the passive direct solar gain.
The space itself is going to be one story with very high ceilings to account for the climbing walls inside. From floor to roof, it will be about 60 feet high. Because of my psychometric chart results, it came to my attention that heating is incredibly crucial to my space. Because of this, I want to maximize window space on the southern side of the building, while using high R-value windows in the skylight as well as on the east and west sides. Because the purpose of this space is for exercise and recreation, there is a lot of heat content that should be accounted for from a human perspective as well. This can lessen the overall heating demand within the space itself.
The first model that I looked into was a circular body. I wanted to see if the curvature of a window would affect the direct gain on the southern side.
Your Design Journal entries for this module should highlight:
- the design alternatives that you modeled and tested
- the results of the analyses and how they influenced your thinking about how to move forward
The overall energy performance of the form is not ideal. It is much higher than the goal. However, when pieces like WWR (window-to-wall ratio), building orientation, and window quality are adjusted, it reduces the energy demand and overall cost per month.
The second form I looked at was adjusting the southern wall to be flat, while making the rest of the building longer. One important point to mention is that the size of this building is larger due to some scaling issues.
When looking at the solar insolation analysis, we can see that the second form has a lower building energy offset compared to the the first form, yet has more energy production per year. This means that the second form needs less PV panel area, yet produces more kWh/year.
I had some difficultly with the energy performance function of this form, but plan to update it.
Based on these two forms, I decided to go with the flat southern side of form 2 to maximize the direct gain from the southern side in the winter. I also plan to add window shades as well as higher R-value windows on the east and west sides of the building. Additionally, I plan to add skylights in order to maximize natural light, decrease electricity need, and make the space more playful with its natural surroundings. I also plan to add a thermal mass behind the southern wall (window) to absorb the direct gain heat and keep it longer so that it may disperse into the area.