Location: San Jose, California

My building design will be embedded within the heart of San Jose, California near Coyote Creek. San Jose is a major city within California and is an influential part of the Silicon Valley. It is a very interesting location as it features many microclimates. In terms of the topography of my building, the location is primarily flat land with some slight slopes.

Within the Coyote Creek area, the heavily vegetated land optimizes the use for natural resources, such as: ventilation, natural lighting, tree shading, solar power, and an abundance of mental health benefits from being surrounded by nature.

In order to generate local climate data, I confirmed my site selection and utilized the Climate Consultant 6.0. Summers in San Jose are usually dry and range from warm to occasionally hot with an average temperature of 82F during the months of July and August. With a comfort temperature ranging from 68-75F, I could optimize natural ventilation and the shading of trees considering the building location is centered around nature. Although certain areas are shaded while others are not, the location of the building will be determined by where I am able to optimize the usage of natural resources the most. As of right now, I hope to embed my building within an area shaded by trees to increase energy efficiency in terms of the HVAC system.

The psychometric chart generated by the Climate Consultant incorporates feasible design strategies in order to meet the 100% comfort goal for indoor climate. I believe employing most of these design strategies will allow me to meet and/or exceed the indoor climate design goal.

My building design will revolve around nature and will be primarily focused on sustainability, as well as promoting mental health benefits. The purpose of my building will be to provide a nurturing environment for students to obtain additional academic resources such as tutoring, therapy, and extracurricular activities. Given the purpose of my building, it is imperative that the design embraces and promotes the main mission of the company itself — to provide additional support to students in need.

Ideally, I will be able to develop a building design that is financially plausible, affordable, and purposeful for other companies to emulate. By setting the precedence for other companies, I believe sustainability will become more of an obtainable goal within the near future.

During my first attempt of designing my building, it became apparent that there are many design strategies I will need to implement in order to develop a sustainable building. I designed this initial building then applied modifications to my second alternative to enhance energy efficiency measures.