Lewis Working Toward Goal

To the Editors:

Regarding John Scofield’s letter of Nov. 9:
1. The intentions behind the design of the Lewis Center included more than just considerations of energy use. The faculty, students, staff and others involved in the design chose also to emphasize daylighting, aesthetics and demonstration technology to maximize educational and research possibilities.
2. The architects’ fees included costs of research on materials, alternative building systems and work with Oberlin students, among other things, not just design costs.
3. Professor Scofield’s critique is based on the assumption that this building would be perfect when first occupied. But high performance buildings are complicated systems that require extensive commissioning and modification to match performance with potential. How any building will actually work is not known until both steps are completed, a process that can take several years. Modifications in the energy systems and controls at the Lewis Center are to begin in January. As it is, the Lewis Center already provides a substantial fraction of its total energy use from direct sunlight. During the prime months from March through October, sunlight provided 62 percent of total building energy use.
4. Mr. Scofield has made a great deal of the decision to install an electric boiler to heat the atrium. But that decision is neither the kind nor the magnitude of mistake that he describes. In keeping with the goal to rely exclusively on renewable energy (photovoltaics and eventually a fuel cell), steam from the coal-fired boiler was ruled out as a possible heat source in favor of geothermal wells with a small supplemental boiler. But all of us — the architects, the College, the design team and I — failed to recognize that the engineers in the final construction drawings had made what was originally intended as a backup system the primary heat source for the atrium. With perfect hindsight, the mistake should have been caught and the engineers should have specified either a larger well field or recalculated the load. In short, there was a failure to integrate the design standards with engineering in the final documents. This will be corrected soon.
5. The idea to include an authoritative independent third party to help gather, analyze and authenticate complex data came out of the design charettes in 1995-1996, hardly a “new-found interest” as alleged.
6. Mr. Scofield questions the relationship between data and context. Context, in this instance, includes the intentions in the original program, current energy performance and occupancy patterns. The Lewis Center has, for example, a demonstration living machine to process waste and serve as a laboratory in ecological engineering. But few other buildings do. To make accurate comparisons, should energy used by the living machine be counted in the same way one would count, say, energy used for lighting? Moreover, use of the Lewis Center has been substantially higher than originally predicted, including dozens of College banquets the preparation for which includes electric ovens and other power-using equipment. The result is to increase energy use but for entirely good reasons.
7. Finally, Mr. Scofield, apparently drawing on a single newspaper story, charges that data has been selectively presented to show the building in a better light than warranted. In the specific instance cited, a reporter evidently misread an NREL slide showing that in June and July the Lewis Center generated 25 percent more energy than it used. The slide in question says nothing about annual output. At the time, this was the only authentic data available to me on PV output. As other data becomes available from NREL it will be so reported.
The Lewis Center, though not perfect, is a remarkable success that has defined a new benchmark in educational architecture. We have learned a great deal about the process of integrated design, the use of low-impact building materials and the management requirements of high performance buildings, and application of solar technology. More important, the Lewis Center provides an extraordinary space for classes, offices and public events. It is an unprecedented educational and research tool in ecological engineering, ecological landscape practices, restoration ecology, renewable energy technology and whole building analysis. Professor Scofield has magnified one or two correctable engineering flaws to cast a pall on what is otherwise a major College success story.

–David W. Orr
Professor of Environmental Studies