Building Strategy The 4,000-square-foot RMI headquarters building is superinsulated and solar-heated. The building's designers wanted to create a building that was so good at capturing and retaining heat that it could offer livable conditions without a furnace.
It was insulated to double the requirements of the Pitkin County building code at the time of construction. The structure was also oriented to the south to better collect solar radiation, and it was built with a "tight" thermal envelope. While a less weather-tight house might experience a complete air change every hour, this building experiences a complete air change every ten hours or so (with the ventilators turned off, or up to considerably more than one air change per hour if they're all turned on).
The building is almost entirely lit by daylight. Its curved walls dampen interior noises and a central greenhouse humidifies the interior. These amenities make the building comfortable, and have significantly cut power demand and operational costs.
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