What happens when sustainability and equity are not afterthoughts, but project drivers?

We were asked to transform the first floor of an existing office building into a vibrant amenity space serving multiple buildings on the office campus.

We approached this project with a clear goal: embed sustainability and equity into every decision, not just as features, but as fundamentals. The space is designed to maximize daylight, reduce energy and water use, and prioritize low-carbon, healthy materials. Equally important are the inclusive restrooms, accessible paths, and flexible spaces that adapt to a wide range of needs.

This axonometric study illustrates how sustainability and JEDI principles are deeply embedded in the design.

For our Westhill High School project, we used Cove.tool to assess compliance with LEED v4 daylight credits. The tool simulates spatial daylight autonomy (sDA) and annual sunlight exposure (ASE) to confirm thresholds—LEED v4.0 requires 50% sDA, while v4.1 requires 40%, with ASE kept under 10%.

Key takeaways:

• Accurate room definitions in the model are critical—missing or mislabeled spaces can skew results.
• Cove.tool’s pass/fail indicator offers quick compliance checks for daylight and views credits.
• Detailed Excel reports break down sDA and ASE by room, streamlining LEED documentation.

These insights help our team make informed design decisions and improve daylight performance for certification success.

Choosing the right materials means thinking beyond the sample board. How something looks in the real world—in different light, at different times—can shape the feel of an entire project. It’s all part of the process: thoughtful decisions that add up to lasting design.

Sometimes the best way to test a design is to step inside it. Taping out a space at full scale helps us—and our clients—feel how a room will function before it’s built. It’s a simple tool that brings clarity, confidence, and better decisions early in the process.

Material boards help translate design concepts into something you can see, touch, and feel. They’re a hands-on way to explore texture, tone, and contrast—and a key part of how we communicate the vision behind a space. Thoughtful presentation, clearer decisions.

Physical models are powerful tools for sparking creativity and collaboration in design. This animation illustrates how a 3D-printed model can evolve through collaboration, with different people adding their perspectives and ideas. By enabling real-time, tangible exploration, 3D models foster innovation and empower teams to refine concepts dynamically.

cove.tool offers in-depth analysis of Energy Use Intensity (EUI), delivering crucial insights into a project’s energy efficiency. Through this innovative approach, Windsor Locks TOD achieved a 58% reduction from the AIA 2030 baseline. By utilizing cove.tool, we optimize energy performance by evaluating site conditions, HVAC systems, and available square footage for integrating renewable energy sources. This standard approach to our practice allows Amenta Emma to drive better outcomes for our clients, our communities, and our environment.

During the early stages of design, it is imperative that the entire team have a clear understanding of the intentions of the project. Simple concept diagrams like these allow us to work through formal and site related concepts quickly and get buy-in from clients and end users. The focus here was how to create a sense of place and scale on a site that was bound on all sides. By leveraging the topography of the site and adjusting our massing we can create a clear front door while maximizing the site’s most unique features.

AE Team members attended the 2024 Northeast Embodied Carbon Summit, gaining valuable insights into sustainable design from leading experts nationwide. Key takeaways included the critical importance of reusing and reducing materials, innovative approaches to minimizing our projects’ carbon footprint, and the necessity of robust data collection to inform policy decisions. These insights will enhance our firm’s progress toward the AIA 2030 Commitment and help us realize our vision for a sustainable, low-carbon future.

While working together with Gensler on a senior living campus-wide sustainability plan, we engaged residents in two workshops. The purpose of the workshops was to get resident feedback/opinion on which areas of sustainability could provide the most benefit. We found this to be helpful both in educating residents and understanding the broader range of priorities within this unique senior living community.

Utilizing a 3D printer, we can quickly produce multiple iterations of a project massing that can be directly compared with one another. These physical models introduce a new level of workability into design and client meetings. Moving, flipping, and shifting elements of a model provides valuable insight into a vast range of alternative configurations. This tactile experience fosters a deeper understanding of the project and ensures that every voice is heard, promoting more informed and collaborative decision-making.

By performing daylight modeling early in the design process, we can quickly understand the impact of aperture configurations on spatial daylight autonomy. Cove.Tool is a great resource for quickly performing these analyses. In this exercise, we are maintaining the aperture dimensions while playing with their frequency and location. We found that two windows leave us far from the LEED 50% sDA goal. These studies provide a baseline for further experimentation and design development.

sDA (Spatial Daylight Autonomy): How much of a space receives sufficient daylight (the percentage of floor area that receives at least 300 lux for at least 50% of the occupied hours).

ASE (Annual Sunlight Exposure): The percentage of space receiving too much direct sun (1000 lux of more for at least 250 occupied hours per year), causing glare and increase cooling loads.

Designers looked to natural elements, colors, and patterns – including some from the Smith College Geosciences geode collection – for inspiration for the department’s lounge.

Concept diagrams are an essential tool for our designers early in the process. It allows us to quickly explore and validate massing options internally while creating a clear way to communicate our ideas to our clients. And, it doesn’t hurt that they are great stand alone graphics!