Webinar – A Design Tool for Early Carbon Assessment in Small-Scale Residential Buildings (DARA)

Residential buildings account for 61% of U.S. building stock by floor area, yet they remain underrepresented in tools used to assess carbon impacts. Small-scale residential practitioners often lack the budget and technical expertise required to perform life cycle carbon assessments during design. This presentation introduces a new open-source carbon calculator developed to help architects and designers, regardless of prior LCA experience, evaluate the embodied and operational carbon implications of early design decisions. Funded by the AIA Upjohn Research Grant, an interdisciplinary team developed the tool using the DOE single-family prototype model to generate parametric operational and embodied carbon datasets representing millions of design scenarios. The tool captures variations in climate, foundation type, structural systems, façade design, HVAC systems, and other key parameters. This session will present the tool’s development, real-world applications, and opportunities for meaningful residential decarbonization identified in the tool.

Speaker: Christopher Meek, Univ. Washington Integrated Design Lab