Over the past year TruexCullins has greatly expanded our use of in-house energy modeling. Our foray into energy modeling has been driven by our participation in the AIA 2030 Commitment, which aims for 100% net-zero construction by the year 2030.

We are now in our second year working with cove.tool, a young start-up company out of Atlanta that has developed impressive AI-powered software for building performance analysis and energy modeling. This is all integrated into our normal Revit workflow. We continue to work with professional energy modeling consultants on large projects, but our increased knowledge and experience with in-house energy modeling enables us to have better, more informed collaborations with those consultants.  Ultimately, this leads to better solutions to deal with increasingly complex conditions.

Optimizing building performance is no longer as simple as throwing more insulation in the walls. One of our current projects is a perfect example of this: the deep-energy retrofit of BCA Studios in Burlington.

The team at cove.tool recently published a 10-page case study on our BCA Studios project. This document explains our process to analyze the existing building shell and develop creative solutions to optimize energy performance with construction costs.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Burlington City Arts Studios project, designed by TruexCullins architects, aims to retrofit an existing warehouse to create a new high-performance space for the art community in Burlington, VT. To reach significant energy and carbon reduction targets, the project team integrated cove.tool into their design process.

Of the many strategies implemented, the design team introduced an innovative concept to wrap three interconnected buildings with one continuous façade to seal and insulate the existing warehouse envelope. Every project is unique, and a data-driven approach helps decipher a complex set of inputs to inform the best decision.

Using cove.tool, the TruexCullins team increased their energy modeling knowledge, successfully lowered their building’s energy use intensity (EUI) and found creative solutions to meet the project’s unique challenges.

You can download the full BCA Case Study from the cove.tool website at this link.  Entering an email address is required for download.