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Presenter: Bill O’Dell, HOK
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King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia. Design: HOK. All images courtesy of HOK |
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KAUST is one of a number of initiatives of King Abdullah and the Government of Saudi Arabia to rapidly and dramatically change many things in Saudi Arabia, including the economy. KAUST was built in a rather accelerated fashion—which actually, in fact, I think, helped some of the results that we got out of it. One thing I will address up-front is they don't want to release the cost. I can tell you however that it was a remarkable bargain overall, just remarkable. We can talk more about that later.
We started the master plan in early '07, finished a preliminary master plan by February along with the preliminary program in March of '07, started the design in April of '07 and started commissioning two years later, and it opened in September of 2009. It is a postgraduate university, basically a research institute. They have PhDs and for the first five years some masters' degrees, but it's primarily a research institute. Interestingly for our discussion here the research programs are entirely focused around sustainable technologies, renewable energy, bioremediation, carbon capture, sustainable agriculture, and the Red Sea ecology. They are doing this with the partnerships around the world.
I'm going to talk about the university itself, which is 5.5 million ft2 of built space. In addition, we designed and built a community that supports KAUST. It is designed for about 25,000 people, and includes housing, schools, shops, and everything you would need to support a population of that size. Of 5.5 million ft2 in the campus, about 2.2 million, are the laboratories themselves. The result that we'll talk about in a few minutes encompasses the entire campus, which is 27 different buildings.
I don't think that any of the technologies or the solutions we arrived at were particularly revolutionary. Maybe what helped was the schedule in terms of the process. We had a number of decision-making gates that we had to go through, created with the owner. The whole project was managed by a team on loan from Aramco who were used to doing large, fast projects—not necessarily universities like this, but large fast projects in Saudi Arabia.
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KAUST campus site plan. |
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The contractor was OJ International out of Paris and their sister company, Saudi Oger out of Riyadh. We realized that in a schedule like this we just could not dawdle on decisions, so there were major decisions literally made sometimes within just a couple of hours. All of the design decisions, however, went through a fast review. The decision gates were the sustainable impact—particularly on the things which we were measuring from the beginning, obviously energy, carbon, and water; the capital cost; the upkeep costs; and technologies which were doable in the region.
Finally, regarding the schedule, there were a number of technologies and solutions that would have actually improved the performance overall that were simply not doable in the schedule we had. We went very rapidly through decision, which I think in retrospect, as I said, helped a lot. I think sometimes we can beat ideas to death when we just know it's going to be the right solution. Our attitude was to look at the alternates, trust our analysis and instincts—and to just get on with it.
We had the benefit of very good teams, including team members doing CFD analysis as well as energy modeling, from the beginning. Most of the front end, involving several months of work, we did in large conference rooms, so that everybody was together. This benefited us because we could instantly or fairly instantly get feedback on a technology and its impact. We did go through a very careful analysis in terms of looking at passive, active and renewable technologies. This was similar to the process outlined in the Ohlone presentation.
As the program was being developed and after the master plan was done, we did a lot of work researching the building typologies in the region. Many of these typologies came back directly into the design. The traditional buildings are very close together and "self shield" from the sun. The shadow of one building shields its neighbor. Wind towers ventilate structures. We completely controlled the exterior loads on buildings. There were all strategies that came from studying traditional regional architecture. I will review the most effective ones. There was no question when we did the first energy analysis, no surprise what the major energy modes were going to be.
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KAUST first floor plan. |
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The first and the foremost challenge in the region was the humidity. It is very hot and humid for three or four months of the year. It's a very hot climate with a very high humidity. For about six or eight months of the year, however, it is quite pleasant; it's very much like parts of southern California, I suppose. So, the first challenge was humidity, the next was solar load, very closely behind, and then the third was daylighting.
In terms of passive strategies, the most effective strategy by far was a very compact solution that brought buildings very close together and minimized the exterior skin, which was going to be exposed to solar radiation. The second most effective strategy was completely controlling the exterior skin. There is virtually no or very little exposed glass that isn't protected by the skin, in this case not by the traditional mashrabiya , but by a terra cotta rain-screen system.
The third strategy—which is really interesting, and I must admit was maybe one of our favorite parts of the project—is how much of the project we ended up daylighting. Virtually every space is daylit, with only a few exceptions in one or two of the administration buildings. Despite the fact that the buildings are very compact, there is a series of slots which you can see in the illustrations that let daylight in. And even today, frequently they just turn all the lights off.
Early on we undertook a strategy to try to take up much volume out of the building that had to be conditioned. So all of the public ways and circulation, all of that is outside of condition space and is ventilated by solar towers at the end of the courtyards, which pull air by convection.
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Solar towers such as this were an important aspect of building ventilation. |
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The active strategies are, again nothing revolutionary. The desiccant wheel was by far the most effective active strategy. It had phenomenal payback. Close behind that was chilled beams. The nature of the laboratories vary: everything from heavy chemistry to materials to nanofabrication facilities and the like. So there were a lot of spaces that we could cool by chilled beams and not by air systems alone.
In renewable systems, the one that performed best in terms of payback was solar thermal, which is used for a variety of things. Behind that is solar electric. We ended up choosing not to cover all of the roofs. While many of the roofs are covered with solar electric and solar thermal, space is left for future systems. Even as we were making design decisions, the initial researchers were coming on board and doing research in their home institutions. A number of the research programs concern photovoltaic technologies, and room was left to test these products.
None of that brought us to carbon neutrality. I'd be surprised if anybody has a large building that's carbon-neutral at this point. However, there is a plan to move closer to that at KAUST. In addition to adding solar electric panels to the roof, there is a plan to add concentrating solar thermal units parallelling the entry road. This gets KAUST very, very close to being carbon-neutral. Finally, since KAUST opened, there has been continual improvement process.
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Impact of design strategies on carbon use. |
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The thing that worked well for us in retrospect, was a fully integrated team. What also worked well for us was the basic architectural response. Having the energy modeling capability working alongside of the design was also very helpful. I never want to do another project where we don't have that not just on the team, but physically located with the team.
We made a conscious decision early on to pull a number of people out, including one fellow to shepherd all of the sustainable issues. He had no other project responsiblility except that and that helped a lot.
What could have gone better? A number of strategies were lost due to the schedule. Radiant cooling was the one we most regretted. It had phenomenal payback for us. The problem there was twofold. One was that the contractor was just nervous about the technology. He just didn't understand it. And then the owner, the manager for those buildings, didn't understand it either. We just didn't have time to go through the learning curve with both of them.
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Photovoltaic systems cover many roofs, with space left for future systems. |
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We had 25,000 people on-site at the height of construction and we did more than we thought we could in our education system on-site. Still, it was a struggle from day one in terms of educating the staff in sustainable issues.
Phil Massey, Haseldon: Would you say that maybe this represents a different slant on architectural form and this energy-creating form?
O’Dell: It's not energy creating. The building is still using more than it's creating.
Massey: I guess it's a form driver.
O'Dell: It is. The form drivers were definitely shaped around how we could absolutely minimize the overall energy. Interestingly, the 27 buildings all had different performances, as you might expect. The ones that I think everybody on call would have said were the easiest–the office buildings–ended up being the most challenging because of the education in those buildings around energy-reduction technologies. The labs themselves are the best performing buildings in the campus.
