Project Details

The Mall Project presented in this live webinar will be located in the Kalahari region in South Africa where it’s dry and hot with temperatures soaring up to 122°F (55°C) in the summer. It will house large and small department stores and offices as well as a recreational area.

Since the mall was designed, a new law passed where projects must meet specific energy requirements on the building envelope and superstructure. Klerck Architects is using GRAPHISOFT EcoDesigner to do thermal calculations to both satisfy government standards and save their clients money in the long run.

If you missed the live Webinar don’t despair, you can still view a recording of the event. Sustainable design live online seminar (The recorded event is just over 35 minutes).

This event was co-sponsored by Graphisoft SA. Graphisoft SA participated in 2 of the Design Charettes, namely Commercial and Residential. This was a first for both our company and the organizers of the Green Building Conference & Exhibition. Lots of different design ideas were called out by the participants. Of course it was not possible to incorporate all the design ideas (a lot of them were disparate) in the allotted time slot. But in the end the final energy calculations showed that with the use of EcoDesigner the energy efficiency of both buildings could be increased substantially. The one design factor that had the greatest affect was to incorporate insulation into the building construction for the walls, floors and roofs.

What is a Charatte?

A charrette is an intensive workshop where stakeholders and experts address a particular design issue, from a single building to an entire community.

Purpose of the Charette

• encourage integrated design between all the stakeholders who can influence design and construction decisions.
• help kick off the design process.
• define and encourage agreement on project goals.save time and money by soliciting ideas, issues, and concerns early in the design process.
• promote “collective enthusiasm” for a project with early realistic goals and directions.

About EcoDesigner

EcoDesigner is an addon to ArchiCAD. Integrated in the familiar ArchiCAD design environment, architects can use it to evaluate the energy performance of the ArchiCAD Virtual Building. No specific sustainable design expertise is necessary to utilize the easy-to-use and fast workflow in order to generate reliable building energy evaluation results on projects of any size.

• New Building Energy Evaluation Report PDF. 40% Percent more information compared to the result sheet of the previous EcoDesigner versions.
• Energy Balance Report XLS. Detailed breakdown of energy quantities in spreadsheet format.
• Building model data export to Passivhaus energy calculator. BIM geometry and material property export to PHPP spreadsheet
• Enhanced Weather Data Content. ASHRAE-compliant IWEC climate data included for default cities.
• Enhanced U/R-value override functionality. Fast yet accurate definition of building materials’ thermal properties in the preliminary design phase
• Energy Source Factors editable on the user interface. Easy application of local primary energy and carbon emission settings