RESIDENSITY: A Carbon Analysis of Residential Typologies

by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

Overview

RESIDENSITY: A Carbon Analysis of Residential Typologies is the culmination of a seven-year study analyzing nine building typologies to understand the relationships between building densities and the amount of land and infrastructure required to support them.

The book investigates how much embodied and consumed carbon is used in each typology and how it affects density and open space from the viewpoint of sustainability, carbon emissions, and carbon sequestration. The study determines which building typology is the most sustainable on a comparative basis. Nine prototypical buildings were designed—Megatall, Supertall, High-Rise, Mid-Rise, Low-rise, Courtyard, Three-Flat, Urban Single-Family, and Suburban Single-Family — set within nine prototypical communities. The study designates an archetypal residential community of 2,000 units with an average unit size of 150 sm as a reasonable and representative cross section of different housing typologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954081390
Publisher:	ORO Editions
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	9.25(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG) is dedicated to the design of high-performance, energy-efficient, and sustainable architecture on an international scale. The firm approaches each project, regardless of size or scale, with an understanding that architecture has a unique power to influence civic life. We strive to create designs that aid society, advance modern technology, sustain the environment and inspire those around us to improve our world. We use a holistic, integrated design approach that emphasizes symbiotic relationship with the natural environment — a philosophy we've termed "global environmental contextualism."

This approach, which takes into consideration building orientation, daylighting, generation of wind power, solar absorption, and a site's geothermal properties, represents a fundamental change in the design process, in which form facilitates performance. It's predicated on the understanding that everything within the built and natural environment is connected, and that a building's design should stem from an understanding of its role within that context — locally, regionally and globally. Such a pluralistic approach acknowledges the interaction among building systems as well as between those systems and the natural environment and seeks to improve each individual system's performance. By using this principle in the design of buildings, we can create structures that not only reduce their negative environmental impact, but in some cases, virtually eliminate it altogether.

AS+GG's practice includes designers with extensive experience in multiple disciplines, including technical architecture, interior design, urban planning, and sustainable design. Architects also have expertise in a range of building types, including supertall towers, large-scale mixed-use complexes, corporate offices, exhibition facilities, cultural facilities and museums, civic and public spaces, hotels and residential complexes, institutional projects, and high-tech laboratory facilities. The firm was founded in 2006 by partners Adrian Smith, Gordon Gill and Robert Forest. Today there are 100 employees in offices in Chicago and Beijing.