Designing for People and the Planet

Stephen Carpenter, M.A.Sc., P.Eng., is President of Enermodal Engineering, founded in 1980 and now Canada's largest consulting firm dedicated to green buildings and communities. With over 100 green building specialists working in Kitchener, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Thornhill and Toronto, Enermodal is Canada's foremost LEED consulting firm, and has provided LEED services for Canada’s premier green buildings.  In 2009, Enermodal designed and built its own headquarters, A Grander View, which has achieved an energy use intensity 70 kWh/m2 per year - making it Canada's most energy-efficient office building. Early in his career, Stephen Carpenter made significant contributions to the advancement of window design and performance ratings in North America, and has since cultivated a multi-talented organization that supports sustainable development, building design and commissioning, the greening of existing buildings, building research and technology transfer. He commands an authoritative perspective on the evolution and future trajectory of sustainable architecture.

Designing for people and the planet is an unfolding reality for designers of buildings and communities. Conventional approaches to design have failed to cost effectively deliver sustainability. The integrated design process, high performance building technologies and sophisticated performance simulation tools offer enormous potential, but they pose interesting questions and challenges. How close are we to net zero energy buildings in Canada? Should designers focus mostly on adaptive passive systems that can easily integrate active renewable energy technologies in the future? How much does the promise of design depend on the realities of operation and maintenance? Stephen Carpenter's lecture will explore the state of building and community design today, and where it should go to balance social, environmental and economic dynamics.