David Fannon, AIA
Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University | Faculty Affiliate, Global Resilience Institute
Boston, MA, UNITED STATES
Professor Fannon focuses on occupant comfort and well-being in long-lasting, low-resource consuming buildings
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Biography
David Fannon is an architect and building scientist whose work integrates research, analysis, and design to provide occupant comfort and wellbeing in long-lasting, low-resource consuming buildings. He holds a joint appointment in the School of Architecture and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
David has held positions at international engineering, architecture, A/E and specialty consulting firms, where he contributed to a range of new construction, renovation and historic restoration projects for government, higher-education and commercial clients. He has conducted research in academic and professional settings, consulted on strategic planning and change management and performed simulation and analysis for a range of high-performance buildings.
David earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Masters from University of California Berkeley, and is a registered architect in the State of New York. He is a member of ASHRAE and a LEED Accredited Professional with a Building Design and Construction specialty
Areas of Expertise (3)
Sustainable Design
Design and Engineering
Environmental Systems
Education (2)
University of California, Berkeley: M.S., Architecture 2015
Renssellaer Polytechnic Institute: B. Arch., Architecture 2005
Links (1)
Media Appearances (4)
If these walls could talk: The architectural history of the White House
News @ Northeastern
2017-08-08
And it remains, in the most literal sense of the word, for three major reasons, said David Fannon, assistant professor of architecture and civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern. The centuries-old building has endured because it’s built out of durable materials, it continues to be used by people, and it has major social significance. “If you think of the Old North Church (in Boston), or the White House, regardless of how useful they really are, they’ve taken on a significance beyond mere function,” Fannon said. “They endure because people want to have a connection to history.”...
"Future-Use Architecture", a project by faculty members at Northeastern, wins $100K Latrobe Prize
Archinect
2017-04-24
“Predicting the future is impossible, but designing for the future is not,” states David Fannon, AIA, Member ASHARE, LEED AP BD+C, Assistant Professor of Architecture and of Civil and Environmental Engineering, one of the three team members. The other members are Peter Wiederspahn AIA, Associate Professor of Architecture, and Principal of Wiederspahn Architecture and Michelle Laboy PE, Assistant Professor of Architecture and co-founder of FieLDworkshop...
Co-op in the classroom: David Fannon
News @ Northeastern
2017-03-07
It was fall 2013, David Fannon’s first semester as a faculty member at Northeastern. He was teaching two courses, including a class for architecture and engineering students called “Sustainable Design and Technologies in Construction.”...
3Qs: How 'nomadic architecture' will shape Rio's Olympic legacy
News @ Northeastern
2016-08-11
How might Rio’s reliance on “nomadic architecture”—that is, buildings that can be taken apart and then transformed into other structures in other locations—impact the city’s Olympic legacy? We asked David Fannon, architect, building scientist, and assistant professor with joint appointments in the School of Architecture and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University...
Articles (5)
Predictive modeling for US commercial building energy use: A comparison of existing statistical and machine learning algorithms using CBECS microdata
Energy and Buildings
Hengfang Deng, David Fannona Matthew J.Eckelman
2018 With the growing trove of publicly available building energy data, there are now ample opportunities to apply machine learning methods for prediction of building energy performance. In this study, we test different predictive modeling approaches for estimating Energy Use Intensity (EUI) for US commercial office buildings and the individual energy end-uses of HVAC, plug loads, and lighting, based on the latest Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) 2012 microdata. After preliminary statistical analysis, six regression or machine learning techniques are applied and compared for prediction performance. Among all candidates, Support Vector Machine and Random Forest demonstrate both accuracy and stability. However, machine learning algorithms are better than the linear regression only to a limited extent, with on average 10–15% lower prediction errors for Total EUI prediction. Conversely, linear regression models slightly outperform machine learning methods in estimating Plug Loads EUI. These mixed results suggest careful consideration in applying advanced predictive algorithms to the CBECS dataset. Individual variable importance was tested using Random Forest, with the top 10 predictors differing for the total and sub-system EUIs. The analysis demonstrates that, for the techniques applied, the variables reported in CBECS have inadequate predictive power to map actual energy consumption. Filling information gaps in areas such as occupant behavior, power management, building thermal performance, and their interactions may help to improve predictive modeling.
Resilience Theory and Praxis: a Critical Framework for Architecture
Enquiry
Michelle Laboy, David Fannon
2016 The growing use of resilience as a goal of architectural practice presents a new challenge in architects’ responsibility for health, safety, welfare and poetic expression of human-building interaction. With roots in disaster response, resilience in the building industry emphasizes the preservation and rapid restoration of the physical environment’s normal function in the face of shocks and disturbances of limited duration. The focus on maintaining function, and/or rapidly returning to the status quo ante necessarily affords a narrow understanding of architecture and a limited view of the concept of resilience. While useful at certain scales of time and inquiry, this so-called engineering resilience approach is only one among many within the broad discourse across diverse disciplines such as psychology, economics, and ecology. Drawing on the academic and professional literature of resilience outside the discipline, this paper explores the multiple competing frameworks represented; considers their influences and implications for architecture and the built environment at multiple scales; and examines the overlaps with existing discourse on change, architecture and time. The analysis of alternative concepts enables a critical perspective to move beyond the circumscribed, functionalist approach afforded by engineering resilience currently guiding architecture practice, towards a framework of social- ecological resilience that can fully embrace the richness of architecture, and results in a necessary and clear theoretical basis for the resilience of architecture over time in a climate of increasing uncertainty.
Using footwarmers in offices for thermal comfort and energy savings
Energy and Buildings
Hui Zhanga, Edward Arens, Mallory Taub, Darryl Dickerhoff, Fred Bauman, Marc Fountain, Wilmer Pasuta, David Fannon, Yongchao Zhaia, Margaret Pigman
2015 An office equipped with personal footwarmers was maintained at cooler-than-normal indoor temperatures in the winter, producing great energy savings. The occupants’ thermal comfort was not affected. The footwarmers provide individual heating control over a segment of the body that most strongly influences comfort perception when one is cool overall. If cooler ambient indoor temperatures could be made comfortable, savings in central heating energy would be possible. During a six-month winter period in Berkeley California, knowledge workers with low-energy footwarmers experienced a lowering of room heating set point from 21.1 °C (70 °F) to 18.9 °C (66 °F). Surveys showed equal thermal comfort in the original ‘higher heating setpoint no-footwarmer’ condition and the ‘lower heating set point plus occupant-controllable footwarmer’ condition. Heating energy was closely monitored throughout. It dropped 38–75% depending on the setpoint reduction and outdoor conditions. The added plug load energy from the low-energy footwarmers was much less than the central heating energy saved by lowering the heating set point (3–21 W vs 500–700 W average power per occupant during occupied hours). A few subjects had ergonomic issues with the particular footwarmers used, so usage was not universal. Additional foot- and leg-warmer design options would help.
The use of footwarmers in offices for thermal comfort and energy savings in winter
Center for the Built Environment
Taub, Mallory; Zhang, Hui; Arens, Edward; Bauman, Fred; Dickerhoff, Darrell; Fountain, Marc; Pasut, Wilmer; Fannon, David; Zhai, Yongchao; Pigman, Margaret
2015 Personal comfort systems provide comfort by targeting heating or cooling to important parts of the human body, making tight ambient temperature control less important. This paper provides evidence that comfort is possible under cooler-than-normal ambient temperatures when occupants have personal control over a very local thermal condition—the warmth of their feet. During a six-month winter period in Berkeley California, office workers were given low-energy adjustable footwarmers and the room heating set point was gradually lowered from 21.1C (70F) to 18.9C (66F). Occupant surveys showed statistically equivalent thermal comfort for the original ‘higher heating setpoint no-footwarmer’ condition and the ‘lower heating set point plus occupant-controllable footwarmer’ condition. The overall reduction in heating energy varied between 38% and 75% depending on the setpoint reduction and outdoor conditions. The added plug load energy from the low-energy footwarmers was substantially less than the heating energy saved by lowering the heating set point (11-21W vs 500-700W average power per occupant during occupied hours). A few subjects had ergonomic issues with the particular footwarmers used, so usage was not universal. Additional designs or options will be needed in future applications.
Advanced Integrated Systems Technology Development
Center for the Built Environment
Fred Bauman, Tom Webster, Hui Zhang, Edward Arens, David Lehrer, Darryl Dickerhoff, Jingjuan (Dove) Feng, David Heinzerling, David Fannon, Tiefeng Yu, Sabine Hoffmann, Tyler Hoyt, Wilmer Pasut, Stefano Schiavon, Janani Vasudev, Soazig Kaam
2013 To achieve the radical improvements in building energy efficiency being called for by the State of California, it will be necessary to apply an integrated approach involving new designs, new technologies, new ways of operating buildings, new tools for design, commissioning and monitoring, and new understanding of what comprises a comfortable and productive indoor environment. All of these themes define important goals that have guided the broad and comprehensive research effort described in this report. Research methods have included field studies, laboratory studies, energy and thermal comfort modeling, and technology transfer through participation on American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers standards and technical committees. Center for the Built Environment research is also guided by its 40 industry partners, who serve as the project advisory board for the project. The work done under this project has advanced the understanding of new and innovative approaches to space conditioning in buildings featuring integrated design with combined low-energy systems. The research has generated the following findings, new tools and modeling capabilities, and recommendations: (1) lessons learned from three case studies of advanced integrated systems, (2) new guidelines for design, performance, and control of underfloor air distribution, radiant, and personal comfort systems from simulation studies, (3) updated software and improved guidance for simulation of underfloor air distribution, radiant and personal comfort systems in EnergyPlus, (4) advancement of personal comfort system technology to the field demonstration stage through the development and fabrication of several prototype personal comfort system devices, (5) a building performance evaluation toolkit based on wireless sensing and web-based analysis applications and data archiving, (6) guidelines for the development of building performance feedback systems (energy dashboards) that encourage building operators and occupants to reduce energy use, (7) an updated advanced Berkeley thermal comfort model, and (8) important updates to American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers Standard 55 that support advanced integrated systems and significant contributions to other American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers guideline documents.
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