bioclimatic Design
Narrative:
Full Goods was designed so the community could enjoy activities in comfortable outdoor spaces instead of being confined indoors.
The project design reflects a common-sense regional response to climatic conditions. The passive solutions came with understanding San Antonio’s local climate with its hot summers and mild winters. Passive solutions include the open breezeways, which were carefully oriented to prevailing summer breezes and supplemented with large ceiling fans (18’ and 10’ diameters) to cool the circulation areas. The large fans provide 25x the airflow of standard industrial ceiling fans.
All interior spaces were thoughtfully designed to spill outdoors into equally compelling plazas, patios, and public spaces, so tenants and visitors can take advantage of San Antonio’s long seasons of moderate weather.
Large light monitors oriented to the north provide natural daylight to the breezeways, while the south wall of the cupola is open to allow hot air to escape as it rises.
These passive solutions enabled Full Goods to reduce energy consumption dramatically simply by “energy surfing.” Only after this was accomplished, active solutions such as renewables were considered.
source: http://www.aiatopten.org