Green Walls and Austin High-Rise Residential
Transcription
Green Walls and Austin High-Rise Residential
Green Walls and Austin High-Rise Residential: A Strategy to Increase Urban Vegetation Randall B Maddox Instructor Werner Lang csd Center for Sustainable Development UTSoA - Seminar in Sustainable Architecture 2 UTSoA - Seminar in Sustainable Architecture Green Walls and Austin High-Rise Residential: A Strategy to Increase Urban Vegetation Randall B Maddox main picture of presentation Fig. 1 Green wall on the Consorcio headquarters, Concepcion, Chile. Downtown Austin: Past, Present, and Future According to a 2008 study conducted by Capitol Market Research, Austin was the fifth fastest growing city in the nation in 2007, with a population increase of 4.3 percent. The 1.65-square-mile downtown area (0.6 percent of total city land area) was home to approximately 4000 residents in year 2000, and 5987 residents as of 2008 (Figure 2). At that time there were 12 residential projects under construction, seven of which were condominium de- velopments. The report noted the surprising fact that “even after these new apartments and condos are completed and occupied, the population of downtown Austin will still be less than it was in 1940,” when there were approximately 12,500 people.1 In 2005, Mayor Will Wynn and members of the Austin City Council established the goal of having 25,000 residents in downtown Austin within 10 years.2 Furthermore, in 2007, Endeavor Real Estate announced its planned development of a 28-story condominium/hotel as part 3 UTSoA - Seminar in Sustainable Architecture Fig. 2 Resident population of downtown Austin, past and projected. of the Domain development.3 The vision is for the Domain to become a “second downtown,”4 with 50 new buildings ranging in height from two to 26 stories.5 UHIE, Plants, and Green Wall Technology Clearly Austin’s future includes dramatic and intentional densification, especially in its downtown core. If this development is going to be done sustainably, then UHI factors must be taken into account in building design. “Among all cooling measures, urban vegetation is the most effective way to directly cool UHI, by providing shade and, indirectly, by plant evapotranspiration.”6 One very familiar way to do this is through the construction of green roofs. However, in high-rise buildings such as the condominium and apartment towers recently built in Austin, the roof represents a very small percentage of the building skin area. Another potential lies in the green wall, and it is this strategy we investigate in this section. The effects of plants on UHIE are complex and interrelated. Two important actions that plants perform are the absorption of gaseous pollutants (including carbon dioxide) into their internal tissues, and the filtering out of airborne particles as air passes over leaves and stems and the particles settle onto their surfaces. These particles are then washed off by rain. 4 What plants do For our purposes here, we are more concerned with a plant’s potential for shading and evapotranspiration (ETP), and the effects these have on UHIE and energy usage. Huang concluded from DOE-2.1C models of shading and ETP that increasing the current level of urban tree cover by 25% can save 40% of the annual cooling energy use of an average house in Sacramento, and 25% in Sacramento and Lake Charles. Furthermore, by placing these trees to optimize shading benefits, the values jump to 50% for Sacramento and 33% for the other cities.7 Givoni reports that on hot sunny late afternoon days in Miami, “the average temperature of walls shaded by trees or by a combination of trees and shrubs was reduced by 13.5–15.5 deg-C. Climbing vines reduced the surface temperatures by 10–12 degC.” He also refers to a study on a double-width mobile home where the introduction of landscaping reduced a summer day’s air conditioning needs from an average of 5.56 kW to 2.28 kW. During peak load periods, the drop was more dramatic: 8.65 to 3.67 kW.8 The shading benefit of vegetation is more complex than merely blocking solar radiation from a building façade. “Vegetative surfaces reduce long-wave heat gain to the house because their surface temperatures are low compared to hard surfaces such as sidewalks, asphalt, or bare ground.”9 Thus vegetation is more effective as a shading device than an inanimate object, much of whose heat would be dissipated simply by re-radiation. Concerning evapotranspiration, plants “reduce conductive and convective heat gain by lowering dry-bulb temperatures through ETP.”10 Huang notes that, “from the point of view of energy conservation, a tree can be regarded as a natural ‘evaporative cooler’ using up to 100 gallons [379 L] of water each day. This rate of ETP translates into a cooling potential of 230,000 kcal [267.4kWh] per day. This cooling effect is the primary cause for the 5 deg-C differences in peak noontime Green Walls and High-Rise Residentiall: A Strategy to Increase Urban Vegetation temperatures observed between forests and open terrain.”11 The beauty of this fact is revealed in studies that showed consistently over a 15-year period that ETP rates are more closely related to net solar radiation than to air temperature or relative humidity.12 Thus in a hot, humid climate like Austin, where manmade evaporative coolers are an ineffective technology, plants are still capable of lowering dry bulb temperatures through ETP, even in the presence of high moisture content. It is helpful to note that these studies reporting decreased demand for cooling are due both to the effects of shading and ETP. In particular, Huang notes that shading accounts for only 6–17% of the total savings in some of the studies, and for 10–35% in the other, shading studies. The remaining savings result from the lowered temperatures due to ETP.13 Green wall technology One well known way to incorporate plants into building design is through a green roof. Another option is the green wall, where plants are integrated into the building façade. The technology of green façades is much newer and less well known than that for green roofs.14 Most of the research being done to advance green façade technology centers around two types of green walls. The first strategy uses climbers—plants that are rooted in the ground or in pots and encouraged to grow up a structure exterior to the building (Figure 3). To encourage the growth of climbers is hardly new technology, for ivy has been used as an exterior wall covering for centu- Fig. 3 Climbers on a green wall of the Swiss Re building, Munich, by Officium Design Engineering. ries. However, more technologically advanced practices will most likely involve holding the climber plants away from the building façade. This research was pioneered primarily in the German speaking countries.15 The second technology is commonly called a living wall, where plants grow in containers attached to structural elements at the exterior wall (Figures 1 and 4). These plants may either be rooted in soil or grown hydroponically—that is, fed by nutrient solutions instead of being rooted in soil.16 Of course, a green façade need not be a complex or advanced technical design achievement in order to warrant consideration. Indeed, in what follows, we will present thumbnail calculations on a hypothetical Austin high-rise residential tower, where we presume nothing more than integrated planter boxes containing native Texas shrubs circling the entire building façade on every floor. Conceptually this is no more complex than imagining that residents merely grow shrubs in planter boxes on their balconies. Our goal is not to discuss the design of a green wall so much as to speculate about its value in addressing UHIE. What green walls do As a general principle of urban landscaping, “the effect of open areas of vegetation is generally reduced if the area lies lower than the land around it or if it is surrounded by walls or peripheral vegetation—in these cases the barriers prevent cool air draining from the site to influence adjacent areas.”17 This is an argument for 5 UTSoA - Seminar in Sustainable Architecture the use of vegetation on a vertical surface, for “solar energy heating the side of a building will generate more powerful convection currents than it will on a horizontal surface, which climbers—through their cooling effect and the creation of complex air flows—can minimize.”18 Consequently, the impact of green walls on urban heat islands is significantly more complex than that of mere shade trees, for the intent is to maximize the shading effect and to exploit micro-climate changes created by ETP very close to the building skin. Furthermore, green walls also act as a layer of insulation, for they slow wind and can reduce conductive and infiltration heat gains.19 The value of these apparent benefits is hardly clear cut, however. In 1988, Hoyano conducted experiments with a vine sunscreen shielding a southwestern facing veranda. Dishcloth gourd, a vertical vine, was installed in front of the veranda, and its effects were compared to a similar unscreened veranda. The screen was effective as a shading device, significantly reducing insolation inside the veranda; however, the leaf temperature of the vine was higher than the ambient air. The air temperature inside the screened veranda was higher than the ambient air, but still lower than the air inside the unscreened veranda. Hoyano’s conclusion is that the overall effect of a such a screen in a hot, humid climate might be negative, in that airflow through the contained space can be significantly restricted. However, he reports that the surface temperature of the exposed walls averaged 10 deg-C above the ambient air without the vine cover, while with the vine cover, it averaged 1 deg-C below it.20 6 Fig. 4 Modular living wall system by Elevated Landscape Technologies, Brantford, ON. Finally, in studies prior to 1991, it was not clear whether the interactions between the shading and insulation effects of a green wall were necessarily productive. In particular, it had “been demonstrated that the average external surface temperature of white walls, even in a very sunny climate, is lower by about 2 deg-C than the average ambient air temperature.... In such a case shading the wall by plants, which may also reduce its long-wave heat loss, may be counter productive.”21 However, we must note that the white wall is a local effect, which merely reflects the heat from the building, possibly onto another building façade, and still contributes to the overall UHIE. Givoni notes that “this interaction between the shading and the insulation effects has not been studied at all in previous investigations.”22 The 1991 date of this com- ment suggests further investigation into the more recent literature. Austin wall temperature data To gain a sense of the effect on temperature that shading and plant coverage can have on exterior walls, several sites in Austin were tested using a Raytek MX4 infrared thermometer. The study included eighteen segments of exterior walls in downtown Austin, each of which was tested twice on the same sunny August day. Every tested wall segment contained two spots in close proximity, one exposed and another covered with vine growth. Materials included limestone, light colored stucco, brick (painted or unpainted), and concrete. Depending on the time of day, the Green Walls and High-Rise Residentiall: A Strategy to Increase Urban Vegetation Fig. 5 Statistics on ivy-covered walls in downtown Austin. orientation of the façade, and the possible presence of an overhead awning or eave, exposed surfaces might or might not have been receiving direct solar radiation at the moment of testing. Figure 5 contains basic statistics derived from the collected data. To illustrate, of all wall surfaces where a fully exposed, insolated section lay in proximity to a section overgrown with vegetation, the average temperature difference between these two test points was 9.45 deg-C. The process of data collection and analysis in this study revealed several difficulties in drawing any meaningful conclusions from the results. First, exposed surfaces that were not receiving direct solar radiation at the time of testing could vary widely in temperature, based on the amount of indirect radiation they were receiving or perhaps whether they had received direct radiation earlier in the day. A second caveat applies to awning or eave shaded surfaces, for these shading devices were above the wall segment and did not shield it from indirect solar radiation or reradiation from nearby surfaces. These results do suggest, however, that plant covering is of value in reducing temperature, if for no other reason than that it shades completely and consistently throughout the entire day. Measurement of any meaningful refinements of the effects of plant coverings would clearly require much more controlled experiments than the one conducted here. Fig. 6 Roof-to-cistern rainwater transfer system, Institute of Physics, Berlin. Case Studies We now consider two case studies of green walls. The first is the Institute of Physics in Berlin-Adlershof, a project by Augustin and Frank completed in 2003. The second is a purely hypothetical case study, where we investigate the feasibility of a highrise residential tower in Austin that includes a façade greening strategy. Fig. 7 Part of the cistern system, Institute of Physics, Berlin. Case study 1: Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics houses offices and research for Humboldt University of Berlin. It incorporates a variety of sustainable technologies, including rainwater collection and management, green roof and façades, and adiabatic cooling with the help of collected rainwater (Figures 6–10). The facility has no connection to any rainwater sewer, but collects and stores rainwater in five cisterns located in two courtyards.23 Fig. 8 Wisteria climbers, Institute of Physics, Berlin. 7 UTSoA - Seminar in Sustainable Architecture Fig. 10 Adiabatic cooling unit, Institute of Physics, Berlin. Fig. 9 Planters on the façade, Institute of Physics, Berlin. The design process included extensive modeling of these systems in order to maximize their expected efficacies. For the green walls, Wisteria sinensis proved to be the best choice as a climber that can grow from a planter under extreme conditions. Also, because wisteria is deciduous, winter sunlight penetrates directly into the interior. The explicit goals of the Institute’s green walls were precisely those mentioned previously: 1) to climatize the building passively Fig. 11 Devices for measuring potential evaporation of wisteria, Institute of Physics, Berlin. through summer shading and winter insolation, and 2) to harness ETP to improve the microclimate inside and around the building.24 Preliminary calculations for potential evapotranspiration rates (PET) were compared to actual ETP rates by monitoring the plants’ water usage (Figure 11). Once the plants had grown to adequate size, Schmidt notes that, “compared to the PET the real ETP is extremely high.”25 Fig. 12 Green wall on the Consorcio headquarters, Concepcion, Chile. 8 (See Figure 12.) He reports: “In the summer months July until September the water consumption for the quite well developed Wisteria sinensis increased up to 420 liters per day for 56 planter boxes. This represents a cooling value of 280 kWh per day. The mean evapotranspiration between July and August 2005 for the south face of the building was between 5.4 and 11.3 millimeters per day, depending on which floor of the building the planters were located. Green Walls and High-Rise Residentiall: A Strategy to Increase Urban Vegetation 45000 40000 Total radiation (kWh/m^2) 35000 30000 north wall 25000 south wall west wall east wall 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Month 8 9 10 11 12 Fig. 13 Total monthly insolation (kWh/m2) on façades of a building in Austin. This rate of evapotranspiration represents a mean cooling value of 157 kWh per day.”26 According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an average June day in Austin provides a solar radiation potential of 5.5–6.0 kWh for a 1m2 photo-voltaic panel.27 Assuming a panel operates at 15 percent efficiency, a 1m2 panel can generate approximately 0.863 kWh of energy on an average June day. Thus it would require approximately 325 m2 of PV panel to produce the equivalent 280 kWh of cooling value provided by the wisteria. Case Study 2: A hypothetical highrise residential tower in Austin The express goal of this study of green walls is to make a case for the effectiveness, feasibility, and desirability of incorporating a green façade into a high-rise residential tower in Austin. In what follows, we do not argue for either climbers or living wall technology, but instead assume that plants could, for example, simply be rooted in planter boxes along the building’s façade. Furthermore, given the number of variables relevant to a green wall’s performance and the complex interactions between them, it would be impossible to argue for any concrete energy savings or quantifiable impact on UHIE. Any such local impact on the UHI is beyond the scope of this investigation. Instead, we choose to describe a specific design strategy and convey the magnitude of its impact solely by comparing it to the presence of trees in the downtown Austin landscape. Thus we may develop a sense for a green wall’s impact on the entire urban system. Considerations A first consideration in the design of a green wall is the NSEW orienta- tions of the building’s façades and the insolation available to each. Figure 13 illustrates the results of an Ecotect model by Stefan Bader (University of Texas School of Architecture) addressing this question for an Austin setting. Values in the graph are total insolation values (direct and diffuse) on a one-square-meter area for an entire month (kWh/m2). For the month of December, no direct sunlight falls on the north façade of a building in Austin. Thus the 7844 kWh/m2 in Bader’s simulation is due solely to diffuse solar energy in the atmosphere. Naturally, the south façade receives the most solar radiation in winter. Note that a somewhat counterintuitive phenomenon occurs during summer. Due to the northerly position of the June sun in early morning and late evening, as well as its very high altitude in midday, the north façade of a building receives more solar radiation than the south. However, both of these amounts are dramatically less than the radiation incident on the east and west façades. A second consideration in green wall design is plant choices. Dunnett and Kingsbury note a trend in green roofs to use only locally native species. This rather obvious criterion makes sense, not only for reasons concerning plant growth, but as a statement of how the building’s design is integrated into the culture of the area. They also claim that plants for a green roof should be drought tolerant. This makes sense as well for Austin, but is likely not necessary in the green wall design we will describe. Two hardy plants for possible use on a green façade are plumbago and lantana. 9 UTSoA - Seminar in Sustainable Architecture Fig. 14 Plumbago auriculata. Fig. 15 Lantana camara. Plumbago (plumbago auriculata) thrives well in Austin and produces light blue flowers through most of the year. It will climb to almost 20 feet, but only by tying it onto supports, as it has no real climbing mechanism of its own.28 Figure 14 illustrates the natural shape of plumbago, so it might be ideally suited to a typical planter box on the balcony of a residential tower. produces flowers of widely varied colors (Figures 15 and 16). Depending on the strain, a lantana will either grow upward into a bush, or trail outward along the ground. This latter form could be used to cascade down a façade to shade it. Lantana is extremely hardy and drought tolerant, and tends to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. It likes as much direct sun as possible, and would therefore be a good choice for façade greening on all but a north face. Lantana (lantana camara or lantana montevidensis) is also a popular plant native to central Texas, which Fig. 17 The 360 condominiums, Austin. 10 Fig. 18 Rendering of the Monarch condominiums, Austin. Fig. 16 Close-up of one type of bud on lantana camara. Fig. 19 Rendering of the Austonian condominiums, Austin. Green Walls and High-Rise Residentiall: A Strategy to Increase Urban Vegetation A third consideration in green wall design is how the plants will be watered. Even in a climate much wetter than Austin, it is not reasonable to think that rainwater collected from the roof of a high-rise building is adequate for green walls, for the façade surface area can easily be twenty times that of the roof.29 For a residential tower, however, there is a potential alternative in the gray water generated by residents, described in what follows. Designing a tower in Austin Of the residential towers recently built in downtown Austin, three have very similar exterior shapes in sizes—the 360, the Monarch, and the Austonian (Figures 17–19) Using one of these as a template, say the Austonian, let us imagine that the entire perimeter of a single floor is surrounded by balconies that are bounded by planter boxes for native shrubs. One such design is illustrated in Figure 20. Assume that the soil container is 0.5 meters (19.8 in) wide. We address a strategy for providing adequate water for the plants. Since the context of this study is a residential tower, we know that residents will generate significant gray water through such activities as showering. A typical American shower dispenses approximately 2 gal/min (7.6 L/min), which means that a shower of around five minutes duration will require, say, 40L (10.6 gal) of water. This volume is precisely the amount needed to provide 1cm depth of water into a 0.5m wide planter that runs a length of 8m. In other words, if we assume that every 8 meters of façade along one floor of the building corresponds to one 5-minute shower every day, then this Fig. 20 Concept of façade greening for an Austin high-rise condominium. alone will water all the plants on the building skin with 1cm of water every day. Impact of shrubs on microclimate Initial motivations for this study were an understanding of how the presence of green façades on an Austin building can impact UHIE, and the development of some thumbnail quantification of the role that native shrubs might play. These hopes were originally a response to a statement in Santamouris: “Moffat and Schiller (1981) report that an average tree evaporates 1460kg of water during a sunny summer day, which consumes about 860 megajoules (MJ) of energy, a cooling effect outside a home ‘equal to five average air conditioners’.”30 Many have conducted research that includes assumptions about an “average tree,” so it seems only reasonable that one might use this notion as a unit of measure with which to understand a variety of plant types. If anything has become clear in the pursuit of this goal, it is that this sort of question is an extremely murky one due to all the relevant design variables, complex interrelationships between the quantities we want to measure, the potentially disparate behaviors of different plants, and the range of possible plant performances resulting from the amount of water that a plant receives. 11 UTSoA - Seminar in Sustainable Architecture Yet, even with all these complicating factors, the one question still remains: Given that much research on ETP has been conducted using the notion of an “average tree,” can we infer what an average tree actually is, and then approximate a conversion factor from an “average tree” to an “average shrub,” thereby giving us at least some sense of the impact of greening the façades of a high-rise residential tower? This is the final question for this section, and we address it in terms of total leaf area of trees and shrubs. First, Huang assumed in his DOE2.1C modeling that a “mature tree has a top view projection area of 50m2,” which appears reasonable and consistent with other assumptions in the literature.31 Second, in order to relate total leaf area of a tree to that of a shrub, we need a sense of a plant’s leaf area index (LAI), which is the ratio of the total leaf area of a plant to its canopy area, that is, its top projection view. The literature on LAI is extensive. Lalic and Mihailovic noted a range of tree LAIs between 2 and 18.32 However, in Sonnentag et al extensive field measurements yielded average LAI values of 1.59 for trees and 1.57 for shrubs in their study.33 If these numbers are a basis for any relationship between trees and shrubs, it implies that an “average tree” and an “average shrub” with the same canopy area will likely have comparable total leaf areas. Assuming this, we may then convert our residential green wall shrubs into a tree equivalent in the following way. If a planter box along the façade holds a mature shrub whose spread is 1 meter wide, then a 50- 12 meter length of planter holds the rough equivalent leaf area of one average tree. Rough measurements from Google models of the Austonian reveal that the perimeter of the residential floors is approximately 133 meters. Thus by wrapping one floor of the Austonian in a green wall of this sort, we have introduced the equivalent of 2.67 trees into downtown Austin. With 44 residential floors in the building, we have the equivalent of approximately 117.5 average trees on the façade of the Austonian. Using Santamouris’ claim that an average tree evaporates 1460 kg of water per day, this requires approximately 917 kWh of energy. In terms of PV panel area, 1063m2 would be required to generate this amount of energy on an average June day in Austin. they also stand to have a dramatic impact on the infrastructure required for downtown Austin to support such a large number of residents. Notes 1. Heimsath, Charles, President of Capitol Market Research, report to Downtown Austin Alliance, April 2, 2008, p 5. 2. Boyt, Jeb, letter to Mayor Will Wynn and Austin City Council members, August 3, 2006. 3. Austin Chamber of Commerce newsletter, February 2008, p 5. 4. Renovitch, James. “Recreating the Domain,” Austin Chronicle, May 8, 2009. 5. Novak, Shonda. “Condo market on firm ground?” Austin American Statesman, August 26, 2007. 6. Huang, Jinlou (2009), p 67. 7. Givoni, B, p 291. Conclusion 8. Ibid, p 292. Sustainable design practices need not be technologically complex or necessarily expensive to implement. Of particular interest is the scenario where a positive environmental impact in one area works in symbiotic relationship with another positive impact. The hypothetical case study of a high-rise Austin condominium tower illustrates such a relationship. By including a green façade and meeting its need for adequate water, we also manage a significant drop in the amount of gray water introduced into the sewer system. 9. Huang (1987), p 1104. If Austin is to meet its goal of 25,000 downtown residents by the year 2015, it is essential to find and exploit as many such symbiotic, sustainable design practices as possible. Not only are such practices environmentally responsible, but 19. Givoni, p 291. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid, p 1106. 12. Ibid, p 1107. 13. Ibid, p 1113. 14. Dunnett, Nigel and Noël Kingsbury, p 192. 15. Ibid, p 2. 16. Ibid, p 239ff. 17. Ibid, p 66. 18. Ibid, p 195. 20. Ibid, p 292. 21. Ibid, p 291. 22. Ibid. 23. Schmidt, Marco, p 1. Green Walls and High-Rise Residentiall: A Strategy to Increase Urban Vegetation 24. Ibid, p 3. 25. Ibid, p 8. 26. Ibid, p 6f. 27. http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html 28. Dunnett, p 302. 29. Ibid, p 194. 30. Santamouris, Mat, p 111f. 31. Huang (1987), p 1105. 32. Lalic, Branislava and Dragutin T. Mihailovic, p 641. 33. Sonnentag, O, p 350. Figures Figure 1: From the website of archdaily.com, http://www.archdaily.com/10685/consorciobuilding-concepcion-enrique-browne/ Figure 2: From the April 2, 2008 presentation on a downtown condominium study, Capitol Market Research, http://www.downtownaustin. com/downloads/DTAustin_CondoStudy_ 20080402.pdf Figure 3: From the website of Capitol Greenroofs, http://capitolgreenroofs.groupsite. com/discussion/topic/show/146768 Figure 4: From the website of Landscape + Urbanism, http://landscapeandurbanism. blogspot.com/2008/07/living-walls-systemsapproach.html Figure 5: By the author. Figures 6–11: From the website of the Institute of Physics in Berlin-Adlershof, http://www. gebaeudekuehlung.de/en/index.html Figure 12: From Marco Schmidt, “Rainwater harvesting for stormwater management and building climatization,” Technical University of Berlin, (draft). Figure 13: Data courtesy of Stefan Bader, University of Texas School of Architecture. Figure 14: From the website of the Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M University, http://aggie-horticulture.tamu. edu/cemap/plumbago/plumbago8.html Figure 15: From the website of Campo Verde, http://campoverde.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/ Figure 16: From the website of World of Stock, http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/ NPF5594.php Figure 17: From the website of the 360 Condos, Austin, http://360-nueces.com/ Modeling,” Journal of the Americal Meteorological Society, April 2004: 641–645. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, http:// www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html Novak, Shonda. “Condo market on firm ground?” Austin American Statesman, August 26, 2007. Figure 18: From the website of Urban Living, http://www.urbanliving2000.com/images/monarch_austin.jpg Renovitch, James. “Recreating the Domain,” Austin Chronicle, May 8, 2009; http://www. austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/ story?oid=oid:777969 Figure 19: From the website of austintowers. net, http://www.austintowers.net/at/condos/ navigator_files/carousel_image_4_1.jpg Santamouris, Mat (Ed). Environmental Design of Urban Buildings: An Integrated Approach, Bath Press, Bath, UK, 2006. Figure 20: By the author. Schmidt, Marco. “Rainwater harvesting for stormwater management and building climatization,” (draft). References Austin Chamber of Commerce, “NWBC to Hear Plans for Second Phase of the Domain,” February, 2008. Sonnentag, O. et al. “Mapping tree and shrub leaf area indices in an ombrotrophic peatland through multiple endmember spectral unmixing,” Remote Sensing of the Environment, 109 (2007), 342–360. Boyt, Jeb, chair. City of Austin Downtown Commission, August 3, 2006; http://www. ci.austin.tx.us/downtown/downloads/Downtown_Development.pdf Dunnett, Nigel and Noël Kingsbury. Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls, Timber Press, Portland, 2008. Givoni, B. “Impact of Planted Areas on Urban Environmental Quality: A Review,” Atmospheric Environment, Vol 25B, No 3 (1991), 289–299. Heimsath, Charles. “Downtown Condominium Study: Report by Capitol Market Research,” April 2, 2008; http://www.cmraustin.com/ Huang, Y. J. et al (1987). “The Potential of Vegetation in Reducing Summer Cooling Loads in Residential Buildings,” Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology, Vol 26, September 1987, 1103–1116. Huang, Jinlou et al (2009). “Simulation of thermal effects due to different amounts of urban vegetation within the built-up area of Beijing, China,” International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, Vol 16 No 1, February 2009, 67–76. Lalic, Branislava and Dragutin T. Mihailovic, “An Empirical Relation Describing Leaf-Area Density inside the Forest for Environmental 13