Image source: Randall Metting
While visiting Austin, Texas recently, I had the opportunity to visit Rainey Street, an incredibly funky street and a clever piece of urban design. Rainey Street features about 20 single family bungalows that have been transformed into a spirited indoor, outdoor, backyard bar, restaurant and music scene teeming with life. It is a must see for anyone visiting Austin and is surely an interesting prototype for decaying urban neighborhoods on the edges of downtown. On Rainey Street visitors meander through backyards, sit a picnic tables, listen to “backyard bands” and sample a seemingly infinite array of micro brews that Austin supports in droves. Visitors can also venture inside the bungalows to discover wonderfully intimate and carefully crafted cozy spaces inside the houses. All the houses and spaces indoor and outdoor are a little bit different. At night, life on the street functions as a singular organic whole, where it is equally interesting to take in the goings on as it is to dive into one of the bungalows, or visit “neighbors” in the backyards. Austin and Rainey Street are in fact a little bit weird and thank goodness, I’d love to go back!
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In Austin, Bungalows and Brews
This Earth Week, we’ll be covering five landmark buildings exemplifying new approaches to building performance and sustainability.
The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Klarman Building is the first hospital in the northeast to implement chilled beams in an inpatient setting. Early energy analysis demonstrated that the use of chilled beams would be the best way to reduce building energy use.
For this strategy to work, however, the peak thermal loads of the façades could not exceed the capacity of the chilled beams. An integrated design approach and in-house modeling allowed for constant tuning of the façade to optimize glazing, solar exposure and massing. The building orients glazing to face true north and south to minimize heat gain and maximize occupant comfort, resulting in a 15% reduction in peak solar load.
Beyond performance, the distinctive serrated terracotta façade reflects the scale and cadence of individual patient rooms, providing a delicate scale and texture to the façade.
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