Amir Rezaei will lead a team from CannonDesign in this year’s LowDown Showdown modeling competition at the 2018 Building Performance Analysis Conference and SimBuild on Sept. 27 in Chicago.
Each year, ASHRAE hosts its annual LowDown Showdown modeling competition, which showcases the work of four teams to use their design and modeling skills to create a near net-zero energy building. The LowDown Showdown has a new twist every year. This year the competition calls on teams to unleash their inner creativity (as well as their analytic skills) as they team up to model the competition’s most challenging building type to date.
CannonDesign’s team is called Team “MuZero” – the “muse” for net “zero” energy museum design. The MuZero team designed a museum for technology inspired by technology! With net zero aspirations, they creatively leveraged modeling techniques at every stage to fine-tune decisions and to create more team dialogue. Form followed function, performance critiqued form, form responded by computational design, systems met the loads and were optimized for comfort and energy. The team integrated surprise and curiosity as an element of design and let the analysis be the judge. They created design “tension” by letting the modeler and designer discuss approaches. This push and pull led the team to new discoveries and a final product that taught each team member valuable lessons.
The team includes captain Amir Rezaei, Andy VanMater, Brian Bassett, Colin Hale, Conor Rielly, James Marsh, Leo Yang, Nhan Bui, Michael Mowrer, Patrick Dempsey and Will Ransom.
To learn more about this year’s LowDown Showdown, visit the event’s official website.