Although the ideas of Green Architecture/Lifestyles, Sustainability, Energy Conservation, and Carbon Footprints have all recently emerged to the forefront of the design professional’s focus as an almost emergency response, our firm and premier consultant team have been practicing the principles of socially, culturally, and energy responsible design for thirty plus years. Kim A. Williams’ academic training and early practice was well founded in the problems and responses to the 1970’s energy crisis, which eventually faded from prominence. Much of Kim’s subsequent professional practice remained very conscious of the concerns and principles of sustainable design, construction, and operations of the built environment.
Through Kim’s work in Arizona, South Dakota, Kansas, New Mexico, Eastern Europe and Texas he has gained strategic insights to a wide variety of sustainable design challenges and solutions. Kim’s wealth of experience enables him to offer clients a deep, well seasoned, and practical approach to social concerns about sustainability and green design. Moreover, TWC Architects commitment to historic preservation, adaptive use, and sensitive new design has always embodied many of the most important principles of sustainable design. Such concepts as the embodied energy of existing building stock, cultural importance of historic sites, thermal mass benefits of masonry structure, historic building design/early passive space conditioning/early water collection and use all offer profound education for today’s architecture. The directions of many LEED or contemporary sustainable designs seem to be more complex and machine-like than the traditional architecture that equally solved energy concerns. Our A & E team of licensed professionals commits our practice to the best of historic design principles, contemporary tools and solutions with a heavy dose of common sense and realistic value engineering, while creating fine architecture, not machines or tributes to expense design.
Current Projects & Sustainability Pursuits
Two current examples of our design team pursuits of sustainable, energy conserving concepts are showing in the creation of our firm’s office suite and expansive studies for our current courthouse restoration designs.
TWC Architects has occupied two office environments over the 27 years of operation. Our first location was the restoration and adaptive use of the historic Dempsey Estate, incorporating a home/work complex within an Austin historic landmark. Our current office location embodies the experimental rehabilitation of a class B office building into a class A office space, using green architecture principles and demonstrating the upgrade potential of existing building stock widely found in today’s built environment.
Our future plans involve a very exciting sustainable design and energy conservation living laboratory to serve as our new office. This facility located near Austin in Volente, on the North shore of Lake Travis was created for office operations and a retreat/education center. A third generation reclaimed historic barn has been relocated and reassembled for use as our future office and laboratory. The concepts of passive heating/cooling design, 100% rainwater collection and use, 60% recycled/reclaimed building materials, live/work accommodations, on site sewage and grey water use, and solar energy applications have allowed this facility to progress toward the project goal of operating 100% off the grid by the end of 2011.
Preservation is the best example of sustainable design yielding cultural, sociological, and economic benefits. Preserving historic buildings preserves heritage and saves building materials that are reflect tremendous embodied energy or will otherwise be dumped into land fills. Such acts of preservation and ecology contribute to civic pride and can result in cost efficient and immediate economic growth in a community.
In addition to the sustainability benefits, adaptive use of old buildings can have cultural benefits that help us remember what the building was and see what it can be. With respect to current historic courthouse projects, our A & E team, in collaboration with multiple county clients are comparing long-term energy consumption data, analyzing multiple energy conservation applications, and conducting value engineering/investment pay back analysis within the project restoration design. Because of the multiple stake-holders such as the Texas Historical Commission, Building Code officials, State and Federal energy codes and standards, and financial concerns from civic/citizen groups, this overall process is technically complex, debatable, and in some cases, provides mutually contradictory issues. We are working towards critical conclusions on the specific case study courthouses in order to benefit these clients and hopefully future clients/projects. Future funding from Federal Stimulus Energy Conservation funding, other agencies, and our own team’s R & D commitment will be publishing data and findings. This extremely valuable research and conclusions will benefit future projects.
