The P.R.I.M.E. Evaluation System: A Student Developed Eco Analysis Tool

摘要

The "Green Kit" was a research project at Cal Poly Pomona funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of the P3 student design competition, which seeks to challenge students to research, develop, and implement solutions to environmental issues and push the world toward sustainability. The competition seeks to teach the fundamentals of sustainability by evaluating a given solution using the three P's: people, prosperity, and the planet. The solutions must benefit society while meeting the basic needs of the user, consider short and long-term costs and benefits, and must directly benefit the environment by reducing negative impacts, improving human health, and reducing resource consumption. Our solution, the "Green Kit," combines passive building design with a low cost but smart window to regulate environmental variables. With sensors and robotic components, the "Green Kit" will respond to onsite climate conditions, maximizing passive cooling opportunities for the building, providing increased comfort for the inhabitant, and addressing the environmental impact of cooling within an architectural context. This paper explains the PRIME evaluation system developed by architecture students to determine and compare the ecological performance of several approaches, acknowledging that in order to determine true sustainability a whole systems approach is needed.