UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ANNOUNCES PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS FOR EFFICIENT BUILDING DESIGN

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Sherman Oaks, CA – April 24, 2006
IBE Consulting Engineers is proud to announce the receipt of two prestigious awards from the University of California’s Higher Education Energy Efficiency Partnership in the 2006 Best practices in Sustainable Design competition. Receiving the honor of Best HVAC Design was the Price Center Expansion project at the University of California, San Diego (Architect: Cannon Design) and the project named Best Overall Sustainable Design was La Kretz Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles (Architect: Smith Group).

The Price Center Expansion project at UCSD has a unique HVAC system design that reuses the supply of air coming into the office areas to cool and condition other areas of the building. The unique climate of La Jolla makes it possible to collect displacement air at 65 degrees farenheit to be brought into the offices and meeting rooms then used to ventilate and cool spaces in the building that can operate at higher temperatures such as the atrium, mechanical and electrical rooms, the cooking facilities, and the loading dock. By implementing this strategy we are using the same airstream to serve up to three different functions as it passes through the building, therefore saving energy and consumption. This strategy also helps to protect the building HVAC equipment from the salt and the moisture present in the La Jolla environment without requiring additional filtration.

La Kretz Hall at UCLA is the first building on the campus to receive a LEED® rating from the US Green Building Council. The building utilizes natural ventilation and natural daylighting in the office areas to minimize its use of energy. The building also uses displacement air conditioning in the main auditorium.

We would like to acknowledge the team effort on both of these projects, without excellent support and involvement from the architects we work with; we would never have obtained such high standards of design. John Gautrey and Alan Locke, the partners at IBE also acknowledge their team of engineers who are continually pushing the barriers of conventional design to explore concepts that provide advancements in cost effective sustainable design.