Daniels’ Pearls of Wisdom at UofT B.E.S.T.

Daniel Pearl, co-founder of L’ŒUF (l’Office de l’Éclectisme Urbain et Fonctionnel), spoke to a receptive, standing room only audience of alumni, students and building professionals this past March 12 at UofT Daniels for B.E.S.T. Lecture. His talk was engaging, fresh and almost unexpected coming from the haloed ancient halls of UofT.

As evidence suggests, the schools pushing the envelope on energy efficiency include the University of Waterloo and Ryerson University, but maybe now, U of T can pick up its game with Mr. Pearl’s pearls of wisdom.

In the building sector, Toronto lags behind other North American cities in its push for high efficiency buildings. Suppliers seem to sell high performance materials to the rest of Ontario, but the city itself is stogy and stuck in its ways it seems. So too with its namesake university. In our experience, the architects pushing building envelope efficiency to the next level almost always come from Waterloo – perhaps because the school of architecture was born of shared roots with the department of the environment. But we digress!

Mr. Pearl tried to succinctly drive the point that after 20 years of trying to increase building energy performance from wild mechanical systems, to sophisticated envelope features – nothing beats the Passive House approach. Period. “People are not our Guinea Pigs!” he said of building public housing.

His insights were prescient in that he derives his opinions on data. He monitors his builds scientifically for performance and solicits information on comfort and use from the building occupants and with that information he’s come to the stark conclusion that people are too busy to manage or understand complicated mechanicals systems. Of course, the Passive House approach seeks to minimise mechanical equipment and emphasise superb building envelope design that’s simple, durable and elegant.

In closing he urged his UofT audience “We need to be re-educated.”  Which came as a bit of a shock, but was pointedly delivered to the people of his almamater.