Ted Kesik

University of Toronto | U of T · Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design

The surge in mass timber buildings being constructed introduces unique acoustical challenges as mass timber is more permissible for sound to travel across floors, ceilings, and walls, especially for lower frequencies. In order to address these acoustical challenges, the absorption qualities of Helmholtz resonators and surface diffusion of scatterin...

Recent extreme weather events and expert forecasts of a sharp increase in the frequency and severity of future extreme weather events due to climate change have signaled the need to futureproof our buildings and make them more resilient. Thermal resilience is among the many aspects of overall building resilience that has the co-benefit of reducing...

Multi-unit residential buildings (MURB) represent more than one half of the new housing built in the USA and Canada. To date, the majority of daylighting research has focused on offices, but MURB have a number of environmental performance challenges and quality of life considerations specific to their housing typology. Daylight is typically not suf...

Condominiums have become the predominant housing form in Canada, and connection to the outdoors, adequate fresh air, and appropriate levels of daylight are essential to people's quality of life. The majority of new condos have balconies, but there are no climate-specific balcony guidelines for comparing design options for multi-unit residential bui...

Access to acceptable levels of daylight are important for people’s quality of life. Multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) are known to perform poorly in terms of daylight compared to other residential building types. There are neither appropriate agreed upon metrics, nor effective methods for designing for daylight in MURBs. This paper presents...

This publication is intended to serve as a framework guiding the design of multi-unit residential buildings in a Canadian climate, specifically mid-rise and high-rise housing typologies. It is aimed primarily at practicing architects and engineers, but it can also be helpful for anyone interested in MURB design. In-depth reference materials may be...

New simulation tools for daylight have been tested on specific building types, mostly offices and schools. To date there have been very few simulation-based studies of daylighting in multi-unit residential buildings. Recent studies have shown strong connections between daylight and occupant wellbeing, not only in places where people work and study,...

In the face of climate change, and as building codes and standards evolve to promote increased building energy efficiency and reduced carbon footprints, it is also important to ensure that buildings, especially housing, can withstand prolonged power outages during extended periods of both extreme cold and hot weather to provide habitable shelter pa...

A framework for meaningful building performance indicators.

This study commissioned by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction has attempted to provide a best practices guide for the management of inflow and infiltration (I&I) in new urban developments. It is intended to serve as a knowledge map of sorts connecting relevant and authoritative sources of information. While the focus of the study is the...

Advances in energy modeling tools and techniques have caused passive solar design guidelines from a previous generation to be superceded by simulation. The ability to model building energy behaviour, heat transfer between multiple zones within a dwelling, and consider the effects of thermal mass and/or phase change materials, along with a variety o...

Passive solar heating of homes is a dynamic process for which solar energy is transmitted through glazing and then absorbed by the interior building components and released to the indoor air over time. This paper presents solar design days as a useful method for understanding passive solar buildings' dynamic behavior for the purpose of increasing e...

Many assumptions must be made about thermal zoning and interzonal airflow for modelling the performance of buildings. This is particularly important for solar homes, which are subjected to high levels of periodic solar heat gains in certain zones. The way in which these passive solar heat gains are distributed to other zones of a building has a sig...

There is a paradoxical relationship between the density of solar housing and net household energy use. The amount of solar energy available per person decreases as density increases. At the same time, transportation energy, and to some extent, household operating energy decreases. Thus, an interesting question is posed: how does net energy use vary...

Building designers need design tools that enable them to rapidly explore the energy performance implication of early design decisions. The tools should enable them to use their experience, along with performance feedback, to find near-optimal solutions, according to their criteria. This paper presents a methodology for a solar house design, followe...

The EcoTerra House is an occupied near net-zero energy house near Montreal, Canada. The house uses a combination of passive solar features, low-energy appliances, and several innovative active solar energy systems to achieve much lower net energy consumption than similarly sized houses in Canada. It is heavily instrumented with over 150 sensors so...

Institutional facilities embody the physical infrastructure of the communities they house. Aging institutional buildings, especially those within extensive central campuses, cannot easily be disposed of or abandoned in favour of new facilities. Demolition followed by reconstruction is one alternative, however, this is highly disruptive and often th...

This paper is derived from ongoing research conducted into the multi-attribute performance evaluation of wall assemblies. The diversity of wall assemblies available to building designers has increased dramatically as new combinations of methods and materials are introduced into the global construction marketplace. Issues of cost, durability, hygrot...

Building envelopes are human prostheses that represent the ‘third skin’ separating indoor environments from the outside world. Like our first skin which is a living, regenerating organ, and unlike our second skin, clothing, which seldom outlives the vagaries of fashion cycles, the skins of buildings are ideally intended to last the life of the whol...

This paper presents a methodology for systematically assessing the performance of environmental separators. The design of well performing building envelope systems has become a more complex and difficult task since traditional methods and materials have been displaced by technological innovation. In a world where more new materials and components a...

This paper examines the potential for passive solar heating afforded by high thermal performance window and glazing technologies. More than 25% of residential space conditioning energy consumption in conventional dwellings is due to windows, accounting for billions of dollars of annual energy use in North America's cold climate zones. Since the 198...

This paper presents the use of HOT2-XP 1 within a 1999 pilot project sponsored by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), which involved the evaluation and energy rating of 64 new homes in Ontario according to the EnerGuide 2 for Houses Procedures and Guidelines (1). Prior to the introduction of the EnerGuide for Houses Program, the only formal method fo...

Based on residential renovation statistics, "sunspaces" are enjoying increasing popularity as Canadian demographics shift toward the elderly and retired. Sunspaces are also becoming common features in new homes. Therefore, energy simulation professionals, designers, and builders will benefit from a better understanding of their behaviour and hopefu...

This paper is based on recently completed research funded by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to investigate cost effective levels of thermal insulation for basements in Canadian housing. The work is an update of a life cycle economic assessment appearing in Performance Guidelines for Basement Systems and Materials Project undertaken for the...

Traditional passive solar house design is cumbersome because of the effort required to vary the design parameters and interpret performance results. When this process is aided by building simulation software, the designer is not given adequate feedback on the relationships between key design parameters and their effects on passive solar performance...

An extensive stock of high-rise housing in Canada was constructed in response to post-war immigration to large urban centres. The building technology enjoyed the benefit of well-engineered reinforced concrete structural systems, however, advanced building science concepts were not applied to the building envelope design. For the first three decades...

This paper is based on current research being conducted within the Solar Buildings Research Network. The design of advanced solar housing is a key objective of the network research activities. It has been recognized that most of the important considerations for obtaining the optimal utilization of solar energy in buildings take place at the concept...

Institutional facilities share a unique characteristic because they form the fabric of their hosts from cradle to grave. In large urban centres, universities, hospitals, government buildings and many similar institutional facilities cannot simply be sold or abandoned in favour of new accommodations. Demolition followed by reconstruction is one poss...

Multi-attribute assessments of wall performance consider physical, economic and aesthetic parameters, including difficult to predict factors such as relative ease of construction. This paper builds on research conducted into multi-attribute wall system performance assessment and focuses particularly on the hygrothermal performance modelling of opaq...