Designing a green library among trees

This paper explores the feasibility of using the integrated design approach to design a low energy library in a secondary school in central China. The building site is located in an industrial town famous for producing high quality ceramic products. The limited budget and remote site location demanded an alternative design approach to deal with this design challenge, also passive low energy environmental design strategies must be considered in order to meet both spatial and environmental design requirements. Another unusual design constraint is the need to conserve the mature trees on site. Through detailed computational studies, the design proposal ensures that most of the trees will receive adequate sunlight throughout the year and they will not be overshadowed by the new library, at the same time, the trees act as natural buffer to provide shading to the library in summer and block the cold north wind in winter. Part of the existing building has been kept and the building envelope was refurbished by using recycled building materials to achieve high environmental design standard with better insulation properties. During the design process, performative testing was an integral part of the design process and the simulation results were used to inform design decision making. This integrated design approach helps predict the building performance well in advance of the building construction starts on site. This paper documents the alternative design approach adopted for designing this library and concludes that selective use of building performance prediction tools during the design process can reduce risk and produce more holistic design solutions.