Passively Aggressive

Properly designed, a building captures existing resources such as light, wind, and heat/cool to provide for the comfort and needs of occupants. Passive systems work in concert to allow the building to manage energy demand by design. This session will build on the concepts introduced in Sessions 3 and 4 to flesh out a holistic strategy to designing passive systems.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this session, attendees will be able to:
- Define passive systems and identify specific elements of a passive design
- Appraise the effectiveness of various passive strategies based on a site’s available resources
- Determine which of a suite of strategies will be most likely to be successful on a particular site 

About the Speaker

Rick Sommerfeld is the Associate Chair and Senior Instructor at the University of Colorado’s College of Architecture and Planning. He holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Colorado Denver, and a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree from the University of Colo¬rado at Boulder.
Rick currently teaches architecture courses at CU focusing on green design and con¬struction. His interests lie in building performance, natural building materials, detailing and integrated project delivery. For the last three years he has been overseeing the Department of Architecture’s Design-Build Program. The program serves not-for-profit organizations in the Colorado area and teaches students an interdisciplinary approach to project delivery. From the projects inception through final construction local engineers, contractors, and architects donate their time to give students valuable insight on their designs. Notable projects include: Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, FEED Denver’s Learning Cube and Dairy House, Maxine’s House (in collaboration with designbuildBLUFF).
Rick also runs a professional design practice, the3rdspace LLC, in Denver. It special¬izes in innovative residential and small commercial design.