When asked to describe “high-performance building”, the response that is generally heard the most these days is “a building that has low energy consumption”. This may be attributed to the global effort in reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and the subsequent emphasis on energy efficiency requirements in the construction industry. While it is fully acknowledged that low energy consumption is one of the important and key attributes of high-performance building, this is far from what the true meaning of this phrase entails. In fact, you may be surprised to hear that there are examples of buildings across North America and Europe that while managed to achieve very low energy consumption, they failed to deliver effectively on some key aspects such as moisture management, thermal comfort, etc.

In HDB, we believe that a “high-performance building” is a building that not only supports energy efficiency goals, but it also underlines other key factors including moisture management of building envelope, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, long-term durability, adaptability to future repair/renovation, embodied carbon, aesthetics, architecture, cost, and more. None of these individual factors should be given “out of context” focus to the point that it negatively impacts other deciding factors. In our opinion, it is only when we come up with a holistic balance between all the above-mentioned factors that we can truly embrace the spirit of high performance building. Failing to do so, can pose the risk of exposing the building industry to unintended surprises, and outcomes different than what were originally wished for.

Please contact us if you are interested to know more about our holistic approach to high performance building, and how such perspective can deliver long-term results. We look forward to be part of your design team on your next project.