G.Z. "Charlie" Brown and the University of Oregon's
Energy Studies in Buildings Lab 

When G. Z. “Charlie” Brown arrived at the UO in 1977 as a
new faculty member in the Dept. of Architecture, interest in solar energy was
taking off across the country. But that interest soon plateaued as oil prices
leveled off over the ensuing two decades. Today, however, renewed interest in
all things solar and energy efficient buildings is keeping Brown and his
colleagues at the University of Oregon’s Energy Studies in Buildings
Laboratory (ESBL) very busy. The business consulting component of
the lab is booming, with companies lining up to tap Brown’s internationally
renowned expertise.

“We have far more work than we can do,” says Brown, who
directs the ESBL and carefully chooses the consulting projects the lab
undertakes. “We like the hard problems, the ones that are unusual and difficult
to solve.”

In addition to offering consulting services to Oregon
architecture and engineering firms, the lab researches new concepts with an eye
toward commercializeable new products and educates the next generation of
architects about the importance of building design on energy consumption.

“We’re in this business because we care about the
environment, and we’re trying to protect it,” Brown says. “Energy use, by far,
does the most damage to the environment, and buildings use about 40 percent of
the energy in the U.S. and last a long time. So our goal is making buildings
more energy efficient by focusing on higher performance, lower cost
innovations”

Among the recent innovations at the ESBL, which has offices
in Portland and Eugene and employs a staff of a dozen, are:

• A
  low-cost heat exchanger Brown calls “cheap and big instead of small and expensive” that
  is made of a lightweight plastic membrane and designed to be installed in the
  crawl spaces and attics of buildings where it uses the outgoing stale air to
  heat (or cool) incoming ventilation air. The product, which Brown believes has
  the potential to operate at 80 percent efficiency, is awaiting a business
  partner to take it to commercialization.
  
• 
  A
  smart window shade system that automatically opens drawn shades when sunlight
  is at less intense levels. Research shows that people often close window shades
  to mitigate low sun but then forget to re-open them when light levels change.
  This means electric lighting is used more than necessary. The system Brown’s
  team has developed taps the energy used to close the shades to re-open them
  later.
• 
  An
  on-grade flooring system that’s cheaper, faster to construct, and easier to
  work on than conventional slab-on-grade concrete floors. The system is a
  modification to traditional Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs), which consist
  of an expanded polystyrene core sandwiched between two sheets of oriented
  strand board (OSB). Brown’s team has developed a way of laying one-sided SIPs
  on a compacted gravel bed covered with a moisture barrier, a method that is
  being used in New Zealand and Australia by firms that came across Brown’s
  publications about the application.
  

The ESBL also offers a range of design assistance tools for
architects and engineers. The lab’s mirrored-box artificial sky (shown left), heliodon, boundary layer wind tunnel, field measuring equipment, and extensive computer
simulations are used to recommend proposed building design changes that
maximize daylighting, ventilation, and energy efficiency strategies.

The ESBL is collaborating with lighting control giant, Lutron, to modify the company's
controls for even higher efficiency, something the company didn’t think was
possible until Brown’s team proved it was.

Brown and his team work with an impressive list of
Oregon-based architectural firms, including: Ankrom Moisan, Mahlum Architects,
Pivot Architecture, Rowell Brokaw, SERA, SRG Partnership, SOLARC Architecture
& Engineering, Thompson Vaivoda, Yost Grube Hall, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, and
many others.

This work has contributed to the design of many of the most
interesting and energy efficient buildings in Oregon, including a Mount Angel
Abbey seminary building that is one of the best examples of daylighting in the
nation (see photo, below left). The ESBL also designed a high performance classroom that includes a new
skylight system called “the halo” that has a succession of louvers that
automatically adjust to the amount of sunlight outside, distributing light from
the middle to the outer portions of the classroom.

According to
Brown, the ESBL contributes to Oregon’s green economy by helping architects and
engineers compete internationally, offering start-up companies new product
ideas that result from its research, reducing the state’s energy needs, and
training the next-generation workforce in sustainable building.

Design Intelligence magazine last year ranked the UO’s Dept.
of Architecture No. 1 in teaching about sustainability. Brown and his team’s
contributions via the Energy Studies in Building’s Lab are clearly a major
reason for the top ranking. Read more about Brown's work with architectural firms.