Can a Building Really be Comfortable with no A/C?

Alan Short, the principal of Short & Associates, chartered architects, and professor of architecture at Cambridge University will prove its possible! He’s coming to Washington, DC to speak about his work at BrickStainable’s Awards Ceremony in March.

Short designs research level sustainable public buildings for a wide variety of activities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Recently, his firm designed the downdraft-cooled School of Slavonic and East European Studies in Bloomsbury, the mixed mode Judson College Academic Centre in Chicago, the innovative Queens Building, De Montfort University in Leicester as well as his first building in Beijing (shown) which is currently underway. Short & Associates is extremely interested in extending its fundamental green design approach to creating sustainable buildings for healthcare facilities. The firm publishes all of its research and the design and construction process from start to finish for each building.

Short is a big proponent of “heavy construction.” At BrickStainable, he’ll present a series of brick masonry buildings from different climates and describe how they were designed to stay comfortable despite temperature fluctuations using much less energy than expected.

BrickStainable’s Awards Ceremony will be held at the National Building Museum March 31, 2011. Tickets are available at www.BrickStainable.com.