Landlord groups and the quest to end Americans’ (un)air-conditioned nightmare

2024-08-06T11:36:00-04:00

Most often, homes with little or no air conditioning are occupied by low-income residents – often renters — and people of color, a 2022 Boston University analysis of 115 U.S. metro areas found. That leaves them vulnerable as climate change makes heatwaves more frequent, more intense and longer lasting. Heat stress now kills more people globally each year than any other weather-related cause, according to the World Health Organization — and many of these deaths occur indoors.

New York, Los Angeles, and Austin are each currently mulling aggressive cooling laws that would levy huge fines against landlords who do not provide their tenants with efficient cooling systems, joining other states and cities in a burgeoning movement. As was reported last week, 2023 saw a 20% rise in heat-related emergency room visits in America. This year is already on track to be the hottest on record, making the possibility for successful opposition bids increasingly untenable.

KieranTimberlake develops an app to analyze occupant experience in passive architecture

2018-05-08T15:51:00-04:00

Architecture studio KieranTimberlake used passive strategies to cool their new Philadelphia office building and installed 300 sensors to record data on how it was performing. Along with their network of sensors, the firm also developed an app called Roast for their employees to rate how they felt in the building.

The Roast app asks the user, “How are you feeling today?” allowing quick surveys pre-populated questions based on building industry standards.

The app offers an interactive online interface to analyze occupant comfort. Filter results to compare comfort acrosss space over time.

This kind of post-occupancy evaluation focuses not just on the building's stats, but also on how people are experiencing the space. Together with metric data and employe experience feedback, the firm was able to produce an overall better design. The building was awarded the AIA’s new Top Ten Plus Award this month, an annual honor given to a building with outstanding performance data.

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Landlord groups and the quest to end Americans’ (un)air-conditioned nightmare

KieranTimberlake develops an app to analyze occupant experience in passive architecture