Gregers Reimann, IEN Consultants: Building higher performance

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Gregers Reimann, IEN Consultants: Building higher performance
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Gregers Reimann, IEN Consultants: Building higher performance

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Gregers Reimann, IEN Consultants: Building higher performance
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What is a high-performing building? Do the two yardsticks of performance — efficiency and well-being — complement each other? If there are trade-offs, how do we prioritise?

In this episode, we meet Gregers Reimann, managing director of IEN Consultants, an award-winning environmentally sustainable design consultancy based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

IEN is credited with several super low-energy buildings. But Gregers’ focus has widened from energy to well-being over the years. Performance, he says, is the calibration of the two.

Episode outline

00:08:29 Designing for performance
00:09:54 “I don’t think it’s really a software issue. It’s more whether people are able to use it. Garbage in, garbage out, right? That’s something we stress a lot in my company, that you always have to be critical towards your results. If you get an unexpectedly good result, there’s two options: either you have made a great discovery or your model is wrong. It’s usually the latter.”
00:12:29 “If you have a long facade, you don’t have to model every single room. You could just model one room […] you can use smaller models, some subsets of the building along the way […] with some experience [on] what you know works and what doesn’t work — that’s the best approach, I would say.”
00:18:08 “My first question to the design team [is] ‘where [is] the sun?’ Sometimes they don’t know. They have been designing a building without any consideration for climate; where [is] the low evening sun, for example, or early morning sun, which you want to avoid.”
00:22:38 “If it’s a low rise — two or three-storey building — it’s not that difficult […] you have enough roof space to get to zero with solar panels. If it’s [a] taller building […] then you definitely have to spend some time on understanding what can be done.”
00:24:11 “First ask what is meant by a high-performance building. To me, it’s actually not necessarily that it’s energy-efficient […] The biggest benefit of a high-performance building is that you produce a space that is conducive for human occupancy, that stimulates your senses, that makes feel more productive and less sick.”
00:35:51 Beyond engineered performance
00:47:15 “He wanted a high-performance building because he knew he would have to pay the energy bills. […] If you don’t push energy efficiency, then it will be very expensive to operate this building. You might save a little bit on construction costs, but then you’re stuck with super high energy bills.”
00:52:49 Becoming Gregers
00:54:35 “In Malaysia, you can really make a difference […] Green was very new when I first came. […] If we can get it right in Malaysia […] we can spread the word around the tropical belt because this is where a lot of the people live, where there’s [a] lot of development.”
00:58:11 “You have to be honest to yourself. You have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say you did all you could. That to me, [is] the most important.”
00:59:46 “If you get about 15% of the population [to] believe in a certain course — this could be, for example, transitioning to a zero-carbon society — the rest will follow. Then we have this subtle paradigm shift […] A lot of people think, ‘Oh, it’s quite hopeless; we need to convince everyone’. Actually, all you need is 15%.”

Summary

It was at a university in Denmark that Gregers Reimann had an epiphany: energy was only a part of the Green building challenge. After all, energy is deployed in service of occupant well-being to create conditions for indoor comfort.

Integration of these two goals — energy and well-being — was the road that Gregers would take his company on. In tropical Asia, where IEN operates, there was much to be learnt about how climate, architecture and technology intersect.

IEN’s first noteworthy project was the Low Energy Office (LEO) building in Malaysia. Completed in the early 2000s, this air-conditioned box showed the industry how to reduce energy demand with a sensible envelope and efficient cooling.

The Low Energy Office (LEO) building in Putrajaya, Malaysia, broke new ground in energy efficiency.
© IEN Consultants

IEN’s next high-profile project, the Green Energy Office (GEO) building, pushed the efficiency paradigm a step forward, introducing new technologies such as radiant cooling. With these systems, energy use was further trimmed.

The Green Energy Office (GEO) building in Bandar Baru Bangi, Malaysia, relied on an innovative radiant cooling system consisting of chilled water pipes embedded in concrete slabs.
© IEN Consultants

By the time the ST Diamond project reached the drawing board, occupant comfort and productivity were central to Greening. Consequently, this office building has a drum-shaped atrium that brings diffused daylight deep into its core; and its external facades are sloped to minimise the entry of direct light to reduce glare and heat gain.

The atrium of the ST Diamond building in Putrajaya, Malaysia, brings diffused light to the centre of the building’s floor plate.
© Lin Ho

Of IEN’s more recent projects, Paramit’s ‘Factory in the Forest’ stands out. Conceived as a biophilic facility, it deploys vegetation on the facades and roof to cool the envelope and offer occupants semi-outdoor social spaces and serene views.

The Paramit’s ‘Factory in the Forest’ facility has an overarching roof canopy that shades the building.
© Lin Ho

In Paramit, IEN helped integrate the form and porosity of the architecture with the efficacy of the building’s electromechanical systems, a synergy of parts that creates a greater whole.

The central atrium of Paramit’s ‘Factory in the Forest’ brings daylight and views to the factory’s occupants.
© Lin Ho

Today, Gregers and his team continue to probe the overlap between efficiency and well-being. Sometimes, the two goals are aligned: for instance, when access to daylight achieves both, simultaneously. And yet, on occasion, there is unresolved tension. It is here, in the seeming choice between this or that, that IEN’s work becomes truly innovative and ground-breaking.

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Videos

Episode Notes

Keep reading if you want to deep dive into this interview’s content and get more out of it. You can also find out more about this episode’s guest/s and sponsor/s, and the team that put it all together.

This episode is brought to you by:

The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction

The Holcim Foundation helps drive systemic change towards a more sustainable built environment. It was founded in 2003 to define and promote the key principles of sustainability for the construction sector and is committed to accelerating the sector’s transformation so that people and the planet can thrive.

The Foundation has investigated various aspects of sustainable construction via a series of roundtables and conferences with international experts. It has also recognised excellent contributions to this field with the Holcim Awards which are considered the world’s most significant competition for sustainable design.

Committed to a holistic approach that recognises the equal importance and interdependence of four key goals, the Foundation combines the collective knowledge, ideas, and solutions of our global community of experts with our recognised platform of international competitions to democratise thought leadership for the entire sector.

Today, the Holcim Foundation is proud to accompany Ecogradia’s new podcast and its host, Nirmal Kishnani, with whom we share a common goal: contribute to a just, equitable, and sustainable future via sustainable construction and design.

W  |  holcimfoundation.org

Facebook  |  Twitter  |  LinkedIn  |  YouTube  |  Instagram

This episode is brought to you by:

The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction

The Holcim Foundation helps drive systemic change towards a more sustainable built environment. It was founded in 2003 to define and promote the key principles of sustainability for the construction sector and is committed to accelerating the sector’s transformation so that people and the planet can thrive.

The Foundation has investigated various aspects of sustainable construction via a series of roundtables and conferences with international experts. It has also recognised excellent contributions to this field with the Holcim Awards which are considered the world’s most significant competition for sustainable design.

Committed to a holistic approach that recognises the equal importance and interdependence of four key goals, the Foundation combines the collective knowledge, ideas, and solutions of our global community of experts with our recognised platform of international competitions to democratise thought leadership for the entire sector.

Today, the Holcim Foundation is proud to accompany Ecogradia’s new podcast and its host, Nirmal Kishnani, with whom we share a common goal: contribute to a just, equitable, and sustainable future via sustainable construction and design.

W  |  holcimfoundation.org

Facebook  |  Twitter  |  LinkedIn  |  YouTube  |  Instagram

As mentioned in this episode

If you heard it in this episode, we likely have a link for it right here. Click on any topics, people, buildings, places, products and/or technologies listed below to learn more about each of them.

00:08:42 “…we were talking about the average building in Singapore and Malaysia consuming anywhere between 240 and 300 kilowatt-hours per meter square per year…”
BASEAN-USAID Buildings Energy Conservation Project. Final report, Volume 3: Audits” | OSTI.GOV
00:15:16 “…the problem in the LEED system…”
LEED rating system” | USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council)
00:22:25 “…If you were aiming for a net-zero energy building…”
Concept of net zero energy buildings (NZEB) – A literature review” | ScienceDirect
00:22:31 “…technologies like using geothermal energy to… to get most of the energy from that source…”
Geothermal Basics” | Energy.gov
00:26:27 “…So ASHRAE — the American standard, basically — have changed the terminology…”
ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers)
00:26:38 “…we have this haze season where we get all this smoke particles from the slash and burn…”
Haze pollution” | Singapore Infopedia
00:28:08 “…Lower the radiant temperature…”
The SMART sensor: fully characterizing radiant heat transfer in the built environment” | IOPscience
00:38:46 “…I mean a lot of what you’re talking about, architects refer to as passive design…”
Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW: Passive Design” | AIA California
00:42:03 “…the one thing that you’ve become a big advocate for is biophilic design…”
What is biophilic design, and can it really make you happier and healthier?” | Fast Company
00:42:36 “…Wolfgang was talking about him because he pioneered the thermal comfort equation…”
A review of thermal comfort and method of using Fanger’s PMV equation” | ResearchGate
00:58:47 “…I mean, the building sector is where a lot of the greenhouse gas emission reductions will come from…”
Overview of Greenhouse Gases” | EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
00:03:27 “…I spent one semester at the University Putra Malaysia here in Kuala Lumpur…”
Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
00:06:03 “…Which brings us to your company, IEN, and what does the company do…”
About us” | IEN Consultants
00:06:12 “…the company was founded by another Danish guy called Poul Erik Kristensen…”
Poul Erik Kristensen” | LinkedIn
00:06:46 “…he won this job to do the Ministry of Energy here in Malaysia…”
Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change
00:42:30 “…And I was at the Institute of Professor Ole Fanger…”
P. OLE FANGER” | National Academies Press (NAP)
00:43:52 “…when I worked a lot with John Bulcock from Design Unit Architects…”
JOHN BULCOCK – The RIBA Architect specialized in low-energy and sustainable architecture” | SHARE Architects
00:43:54 “…when I worked a lot with John Bulcock from Design Unit Architects…”
Design Unit Architects
00:48:29 “…that then pointed to Wolfgang Kessling which was one of your previous guests…”
Wolfgang Kessling, Transsolar: Low tech and low energy for high comfort” | Ecogradia
00:03:31 “…I spent one semester at the University Putra Malaysia here in Kuala Lumpur…”
Kuala Lumpur” (Malaysia) | Britannica
00:07:04 “…This is the LEO building, right?…”
LOW ENERGY OFFICE BUILDING IN PUTRAJAYA, MALAYSIA. CASE STUDIES AND INNOVATIONS” | ICONDA®CIBlibrary
00:07:46 “…this was the new government centre of Malaysia called Putrajaya…”
Putrajaya” (Malaysia) | Britannica
00:28:25 “…The ST Diamond project, for example…”
DIAMOND BUILDING”| malaysiaGBC (Malaysia Green Building Council)
00:36:25 “…I would say subsequently, with the Diamond building and the Green Tech building and so on…”
Green Energy Office Building”| Malaysian Green Technology and Climate Change Corporation (MGTC)
00:42:17 “…I think the first time I really realised this was when I was a student at DTU, Denmark’s Technical University…”
DTU (Technical University of Denmark)
00:42:31 “…Yeah, that’s a factory and it’s called Paramit: ‘Factory in the Forest’…”
Factory in the Forest / Design Unit Architects Snd Bhd” | ArchDaily
00:42:39 “…Also in Malaysia, up in Penang…”
Penang” (Malaysia) | Britannica

There are no design features mentioned in this episode.

00:09:44 “…when I first came to Malaysia, we were using the IES software…”
IES (Integrated Environmental Solutions)
00:27:47 “…one specific technology that you have championed and used more than once in your projects: radiant cooling…”
Radiant Cooling” | Energy.gov
00:30:02 “…which is also called TABS, which stands for thermally activated building systems…”
Thermally Activated Building System (TABS): Efficient cooling and heating of commercial buildings” | ResearchGate

Host
Nirmal Kishnani

Producer
Maxime Flores

Editorial assistant
Abhishek Srivastava

Sound technician and editor
Kelvin Brown  |  Phlogiston

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