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From the Design Quarterly: Looking back on the first large-scale net zero energy building
By Porus Sam Antia
What the successes of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory research facility say about striving for zero today
This article first appeared as "First large-scale net zero energy building" in the Stantec Design Quarterly, Issue 06.
In 2007, when the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, issued a design competition for a new 222,000-square-foot research support facility (RSF), it wanted to make a splash in the industry. The U.S. Department of Energy, which runs NREL as a national laboratory, wanted to show that ultra-energy-efficient buildings were achievable. The project's requirements were highly researched and written in detail with requirements ranging from "mission critical" to "blue sky" or "if possible." It specified LEED Platinum as a requirement, but the project aspired to be net zero energy, a certification that didn't exist at the time.
NREL's mission was to prove how its own research on energy efficiency, commercial building technology, and renewable energy could be translated to viable commercial properties within a reasonable budget. The building competition came with a $65 million budget and a stringent mix of requirements in energy, sustainability, safety, and design-build process—its energy use would be offset by a renewable system. There were no prototypes for the building NREL envisioned, it would be the first of its kind.
The design-build team, led by Stantec as architect and mechanical-systems designer, had experience building smaller net zero energy and LEED-Platinum facilities up to 40,000 SF in the US. To win the competition, the team had to scale up its ideas and approaches in order to deliver NREL everything it specified, not just the essentials. To win the project, we implemented a range of strategies and in doing so, created a model for the largest net zero energy building in the nation—on a budget. The result? An iconic building which sparked the net zero design movement, one that today—almost 10 years after opening day—still shines a light on the what's possible with high-performance, sustainable design.
Completed in June 2010, the NREL RSF-I is home to approximately 800 Department of Energy and NREL administrative staff.
Porus Sam Antia
Principal, Buildings
Contact Porus Sam
Design Quarterly
Read and download Stantec's Design Quarterly Issue 06 | Destination Zero
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory Research Support Facility in Golden, Colorado, opened in 2010.
Ambitious but clear goals and an integrated team
As an organization focused in the field of building energy performance, NREL had the detailed knowledge and research to target and specify a clear energy utilization intensity goal for its new building. They knew what they wanted and knew it was possible.
The highly researched targets resulted in a specific goal. The original target of 25 KBTU per square foot was adjusted to 35 KBTU per square foot to include the energy use of a 2,000-person data center. That was an extraordinary target for a building at that time.
NREL mandated several critical inputs that influenced the building's energy appetite and created the basis for the performance-based energy model. We committed to meeting every one of NREL's challenging mission critical, highly desirable and if-possible objectives as a strategy to win the project. NREL insisted that delivery come from an integrated team of architects, engineers, and builders so that everyone involved, from day one, understood the project goals and strategies. Maintaining that integrated team communication around a given solution was a huge part of what set this project up for success.
Architectural solutions and strategies
Our solution to the goals set out in the design competition—which required a 90% daylit building—was to design a form and shape of the building that could maximize daylighting.
As an organization focused in the field of building energy performance, NREL had the detailed knowledge and research to target and specify a clear energy utilization intensity goal for its new building.
We chose an H-shaped building with narrow 60-foot wide floor plates, which enabled us to use natural daylight but also to naturally ventilate the space. That's just one of the architectural and passive strategies we employed to achieve efficiency—before any mechanical or renewable systems were selected.
The two long wings of the H-shaped building stay cool in warmer months due to the internal facing thermal mass in the walls, not unlike the cathedrals of Europe. Continuous insulation and extensive exterior window shading further contribute to an envelope-driven, low-energy building performance strategy.
When we realized that the site had expansive soil and would require a raft slab, we proposed an underground thermal labyrinth that could be used to preheat or precool the air for the building at minimum additional cost. Further strategies employed included orienting the building to the path of the sun to reduce heat gain and enhance daylighting, making sure there was no thermal bridging and utilizing triple-pane windows, evaporative underfloor cooling, radiant ceilings, natural ventilation, and night venting. We utilized a transpired solar collector on the south façade to make hot air and release it to the labyrinth to preheat the building. We did something similar with the hot air from the data center, containing it and dumping it into the labyrinth to use for preheating the building.
Natural daylight flows into the NREL research facility—with 90% of the building daylit without large glass openings.
Natural daylight, natural ventilation by design
With our narrow floor plates, we could naturally cross-ventilate by using an operable window system. Windows were comprised of a vision window and daylighting window, which incorporated a light louver system that could project light 14 feet deep into the space per vertical foot of light louver installed. That's how we daylit 90% of the building without turning to large glass openings, which would have detracted from the insulation needs of our high-performance envelope. We daylit 90% of the building while achieving a 28% window-to-wall ratio.
Serious goals, serious stakes
One key to our success was modeling the project as accurately as possible, to ensure that we could hit our targets during both design and construction. NREL was so serious about hitting net zero energy, that it tied financial incentives to achieving energy goals in each phase. In fact, if we couldn't demonstrate that we were on target in the early months to hit the goals we promised in the design competition phase, then a contractual mechanism allowed the design-build team and client to part ways.
Those targets were paramount to NREL, because they wanted to use this building as an example for the entire industry, to show it how to achieve net zero energy at cost comparable to conventional.
A second opportunity
The resulting RSF-I building was the demonstration center that NREL envisioned. In fact, the client was so happy they asked us to do it again. The same design-build team was asked to design and construct a 110,000-SF addition (NREL RSF-II) to the campus. For RSF-II, we were able to apply some lessons learned from RSF-I.
For example, we found that we didn't need concrete partitions in our thermal labyrinth because there was enough thermal mass in the raft slab and basement walls for thermal storage. We also realized we could reduce the window frame area by using larger operable windows. And we discovered we could naturally ventilate the stairwells instead of using active cooling. But probably the most rewarding discovery was that we'd done very well the first time around.
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Annual energy use has been tracked at the NREL facility against energy models, and it consistently falls within 5-10% of predictions.
A long-term commitment
NREL RSF-I was conceived as a living laboratory. NREL planned to write dozens of scientific research papers on the building and its performance, so it has made investigating and tracking a zero-energy building's operational energy performance a priority. In fact, the building monitors its energy use and production, light levels and water usage, and displays the data in the building lobby.
Through a close connection with NREL's Shanti Pless, I was able to remain in the loop on the measurement and verification stage of the building long after the design-build team had left the site. It was important for Stantec, as a consulting firm, to stay connected with the operational side of a zero-energy building and access performance data to confirm that the targets we set during design were met. This is key to the reputation and success of our ongoing building performance and sustainable design practice.
Proven net zero
Annual energy use has been tracked against our energy model since the building opened in 2010, and it consistently falls within 5-10% of predictions, which sets a high standard for the industry. NREL is applying for the new LEED Zero certification with the U.S. Green Building Council that addresses net zero operations and resources in building.
NREL RSF I&II succeeded because it was driven by a committed and educated client who wanted to create a truly replicable strategy for NZE buildings and a truly integrated team that focused on the little details with the big picture project goals in mind. We know it succeeded because of the extensive post-occupancy focus on zero energy operations.
Today, net zero is no longer a novelty, yet we still have a long way to go move beyond what we designed for NREL across our built environment. Now we know what's possible when we strive for zero.
Porus is a building simulation manager. He brings a thorough understanding of energy and thermal systems, which designers can use to quantify energy savings.
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3 design solutions to sort out the carbon impact of logistics
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Combining Generic/Flexible Labs with Highly Specialized Research Space
Research + Benchmarking Issue 02 | Connected


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Synths, Sex & San Francisco in The 1970s: Pat, Art, HiNRG & Me by Maurice Tani
Synths, Sex & San Francisco in The 1970s: Pat, Art, HiNRG & Me
by Maurice Tani
In the seventies I played with many people in many places but I had two main musical partners, Art Adcock and Pat Cowley. Pat became one of the pioneers in high-energy, electronic dance music. Tragically, he was one of the earliest victims of the AIDS epidemic and passed as he was rapidly ascending the ladder of success. That was 1982.
Over the years, pockets of interest in Pat and his music would appear. When the internet appeared, I began to be contacted occasionally by people looking for information about him. I was struck by how passionate these people were and how widespread across the globe they were. They didn't come often, but they kept coming.
Then a group of DJs in San Francisco calling themselves Honey Soundsystem latched on and began issuing unreleased Cowley material. What follows here began as liner notes I started writing for another CD they're releasing of Pat's early material. My rambling needed to be edited down to fit their packaging -I hate tiny type! But here, well, consider this the extended dance mix...
The reels
When Honey Soundsystem DJ Josh Cheon contacted me and asked what unreleased early recordings I might have of Patrick, I was happy to help. I dug through the hundreds of hours of tape in my attic, handed him a stack of ten-inch reels and wished him luck. The tapes I gave him were sort of a master archive of all the work that came out of our studio -mostly in the seventies. They contained mixes that Pat, our partner Art Adcock and I all did individually and in various combinations with each other and people we brought in. We had been pretty good about maintaining the reels. Unfortunately, we hadn't been very good about writing dates or much information beyond titles on the boxes, and when Josh started digging, he had lots of questions about who, when, where and what. He would send me tracks he had pulled and I would try to jog my memory of events decades ago. Material I had produced myself or played on was relatively easy to identify, as well as some other material I had been present for the production of, but Josh came up with some pieces of music that ranged from vaguely to completely unfamiliar. Listening to the tracks that weren't ringing loud bells, elements of the production process often yielded the best clues to the dates, some things we did weren't possible until we had certain pieces of gear, or had been exposed to some particular influence. This music wasn't created in a vacuum. It was very much of that place and time and it got me thinking about context as an essential element of art. Art can't be discussed without context. It is essentially a dialog exchanged between the creator and those that experience it. Having a limitless vocabulary, context is the unifying language of art that ultimately defines work as irrelevant nonsense, fresh creative genius or banal repetition of ideas already expressed. Context may span centuries or it might be a fleeting moment. Does the symbolism of that 500-year-old tapestry come through today? Is Banksy going to make any sense in 500 years? It can if one understands the context; other wise Warhol was just painting soup cans. Patrick burned brightly for a decade in San Francisco. His talent certainly came from within, but it did not exist in a vacuum. Pat's world was a bubble in time and space. It was a time of major changes in society and technology and he rode those changes in a space that embraced them.
I met Pat in college during the spring of 1973. He was doing a shift as the student manager of the Electronic Music Lab. It was a volunteer job, but it gave him unlimited access to any equipment not being used. He had keys and we would stay long after the last student had signed out. Under the direction of Jerry Mueller, the lab consisted of a few telephone booth sized rooms each equipped with a quirky, English-made EMS VCS3 "Putney" synthesizer and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Electronic music synthesizers had been, up to this point, large, expensive, modular systems. The Putney was one of the first compact synthesizers. It contained a sampling of all the "modules" that made up the existing systems, (i.e. early Moogs and Buchlas) -a couple of VCOs, VCAs, an LFO, a lo-pass VCF, an ADSR, noise generator, ring modulator, crude spring reverb, a joy stick controller and a trigger button -all connected together in any combination by a 16x16 pin matrix (replacing the spaghetti of patch cords of earlier systems. Quite an innovation that never caught on).
EMS VC3 "Putney"EMS VC3 "Putney"
One should note a common feature of modern synthesizers missing from that list: the keyboard. Back then, the keyboard was still an optional device that could be attached to the system, but these early oscillators that generated the tone were very unstable, requiring constant adjustment and making use of the keyboard maddeningly difficult to keep in tune. Because of that, in spite of the Putney's compact size, it was not a practical performance instrument. The music made on it tended to be experimental "space age" sounds recorded individually to tape and then physically spliced together to build "pieces" in the style of avant-garde composers such as Morton Subotnick. To most outside of the art dialog of that time, much of this music simply sounds like a series of blips and squeaks, but for those of us taking part in the conversation at the time, it was exciting new technology and an opportunity to create music with a new palette of sounds. Like early computers though, it took a lot of effort to get the simplest result. Electronic music in 1973 was not for the impatient. Imagine having to consciously operate every muscle required to speak. First move your diaphragm to fill your lungs with air. Then apply a small, specific amount of air pressure as you tighten your vocal chords to get them vibrating. Then separately operate your jaw, lips and tongue to form each of the timbres using dozens of separate muscles to form each separate phonetic sound to create each word. Our brains perform all this work for us in the background, just as modern computer programs automatically perform hundreds of functions for us at the single click. Early synthesizers weren't there yet. Every sound was the result of conscious decision to connect modules in a specific order and control them in a specific way, and the sequence of these sounds was determined by arranging short individually recorded bits of magnetic tape using a razor blade and splicing block. Completed electronic music pieces could contain dozens or even hundreds of tape splices. So, that's where Pat and I started. One blip and squeak at a time. It was the baby talk of a language just developing. Advances in the equipment came quickly over the next few years, but for Pat and me personally, a pivotal moment occurred near the end of that first semester when Pat introduced me to Art Adcock, a classmate that he had begun to work with off campus.
Art Adcock
Art had a little money and had bought his own synthesizer system, an Electrocomp. This system was a huge improvement over the Putney and superior in many ways to the MiniMoog and ARP 2600 self-contained systems that had just appeared. And just as important, Art had bought a new tape machine that changed the face of recording: the TASCAM 3340 1/4" 4-track recorder. This machine was revolutionary. Considered "semi-pro", the 3340 was priced at about a third of the professional machines and used much less expensive 1/4" tape. It was a compromise in quality, but suddenly, multi-track recording capability was in the hands of anyone with a couple thousand dollars. It can be argued that this machine began a process of democratization that took recording out of million dollar facilities run by engineers in lab coats and into the hands of anyone with a computer (or smartphone) today. With Art's new Electrocomp system, the 3340, a small mixer and a Tandberg 2-track reel-to-reel to mix down onto, the three of us began making actual melodic music together. At first we did some projects where we all took turns contributing, but we soon moved to working in pairs, and eventually to using the studio in shifts for our own projects, bringing in each other to lend our various strengths. Pat had three days a week, I had three days and Art… well, Art lived there. Pat and I were into the music. Art breathed synthesizers. While we were all focused on the synths, we each had our own way of approaching them, and between the three of us, the studio was in use 12-18 hours a day, nearly every day. Because Art owned the gear, and was more apt to read manuals and other material on the subject, he had the most time with the equipment and was the most knowledgeable about the workings and operation of it. Pat, on the other hand, worked more intuitively. His early process was often shooting in the dark and seeing what happened. He didn't know what the Q/Resonance control on a VCF (Voltage Controlled Filter) actually did, but used it and most of the dozens of parameters in the system to wonderful effect. Between the two of them, Pat made Art's material much more musical and Art brought Pat technical possibilities he wouldn't have come up with on his own. It was a left brain/right brain relationship that worked very well for them both. While I was also into the synths, when working with either of them in the studio, as the only one of us that worked actively as a musician in bands and playing out, my contributions tended to be guitar and bass parts. Art and I did more collaborative writing. Pat was more self-contained and could play a bit of guitar too, so I generally played bass when we worked together.
And those were the positions we played for the live electronic music concert we had at the end of our semester when we performed Pat's piece "Crickets" using every synthesizer in the lab, all of Art's gear and every other unit we could lay our hands on. Crickets was Pat's first long form musical piece combining melody with all the wild electronic sounds and was the grand finale of an evening of short blip & squeak taped student pieces. It took half a dozen students to set up and control all the sounds required during the performance. The visual icing on the cake of the performance involved a gigantic speaker enclosure that someone at the college had designed to reproduce a 20hz note -the lowest sound the human ear interprets as a note. It was a huge exponential horn 8' high, 8' wide at the opening and tapering back to a 15" driver mounted 20' in the rear. Some use had to be found for this academic exercise in acoustics and it was decided that I would play bass through it. Everyone and all the gear was set up in front of the stage, orchestra pit-style with the rear curtain closed. I was at the front of the band, the only player standing with everyone else seated behind synthesizers, madly pulling patch cords and twisting knobs. The gigantic horn was on a huge dolly with it's opening at the rear of the stage behind the curtain and the driver end hanging out a roll up door on the loading dock out back, some 60 or 70 feet from where I was standing. The acoustic delay between hitting a note and its arrival was like trying to play an echo. Attempting to play that far ahead of the beat is not conducive to pocket playing. At the big finale of Pat's piece, the stagehands pulled back the curtain to reveal the mega horn and began rolling it forward. You could feel the collective gasp (the '70s equivalent of WTF?!?) from the audience, but I'll never forget the look of growing panic on Pat and Art as it appeared that the stagehands weren't going to be able to stop it from rolling right off the stage and into them. Luckily, disaster was averted with inches to spare and the audience loved it so much that we performed the entire piece a second time as an encore with less bass delay and terror...
Listening to tracks Josh dug out of the tapes in my attic, material from this period had a distinctive sound. In this earliest work from the Electronic Music Lab and our/Art's home studio, none of us were working with much traditional percussion yet. We used some synthesized sounds for percussive effects and rhythms but Pat's drums had yet to make more than an occasional cameo appearance in the material. We weren't really prepared at that point to record much using microphones but that and more was about to change.
Busted and The Studio Moves
This was 1974 and Art was living at Golden Gate and Scott in the gritty Western Addition of San Francisco. In the fall of that year, Art and I were rehearsing a group in the studio when the police raided us. Pat was not there. They had been on a stakeout up the street, this was the era of the Patty Hearst/SLA kidnapping/bank robbery/etc. and relations between the police and counterculture were very bad. We were arrested on trumped up drug charges without a warrant. Months, multiple court appearances and thousands of dollars later, the police had no evidence to use, simply lost interest and all the charges were dropped, but we knew we had to move the studio somewhere safer.
(The story of the arrest is contained in greater detail here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/10152825083498150/)
Plymouth Street
Art and I found a small, very funky house out in the Ingleside district, close to the college. 1078 Plymouth Street. We set up the studio again, now with Pat's drums and my guitar and bass gear installed full time and a new ARP 2600 on long-term loan, and went back to work. It was music full-time now. We formed Short Circuit Productions, doing mostly radio work. We did some jingles and commercial work but with our background in blip & squeak electronic sounds, we began to focus on sound effects for one of the biggest top-40 AM stations in the country, KFRC. Meanwhile we continued experimenting and writing anything that came into our heads. Besides Pat's drums, this period also saw experimentation with tape loops and layered hand percussion: cowbells, wood blocks, tambourines, maracas, and other assorted, mostly Latin percussion. The Oberheim DS-2 digital sequencer appeared in the studio soon after the move and it's rapid, swirling cascades of machine-like notes marked a new period for all of our work. The next years were a frothy combination of synth-based beats with traditional percussion layered on top. Pat in particular really piled up the percussion tracks, bouncing them down repeatedly on the 4-track recorder to lay a bed on top of which he would build his pieces. The roots of Pat's Hi-NRG sound are in this material.
'70s San Francisco
San Francisco in the early seventies was still an affordable place to live, and perhaps more importantly, what would be considered borderline poverty was considered fashionable in the alternative culture. Rents were around $100 per bedroom and we didn't know anyone with a new car until late in the decade. Pat came to SF with no money, but money was never an issue. He found part time work, made his rent and enrolled in a college that was nearly free. Materialism was largely considered something everyone flocking to The City was rejecting. My modus operandi in those years was to take a house band or touring gig for a few months, save a nest egg of a couple thousand dollars, then quit and live off it for months while I pursued my real life. It didn't really occur to us at the time, we were too close to it and it just seemed like where things were at, but 1970s SF was a very sexually charged place. We were just a few years after the sexual revolution and the Summer of Love. The Stone Wall riots in NYC were still fresh and AIDS was still almost a decade away. The City was full of free love hippies, a rapidly growing community of gay people and straight, open relationship singles. SF was the capital of a new generation of pornography, bigger budget, more artistic and visible. Adult classified ads appeared first in the Berkeley Barb underground paper. Sex shops and bathhouses sprouted up across town, especially in The Castro and in the suddenly booming Folsom Street industrial area. By the time Pat arrived in SF, sex was everywhere, open and it was nearly all accepted as simply part of a wide range of preferences that were all fine and there to be explored as one felt like. Open minds and affordable living brought a burgeoning alternative art and theater scene. Pat was using much of his studio time now doing projects with people in the outrageous gay arts and theater community. Songs, radio spots, soundtracks.... Often very camp, it may have been shocking for mainstream America at the time, it certainly wanted to be, but like Patrick himself, there was an innocence and sweetness to it. The Cockettes, The Angels of Light, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, drag stars like Divine, etc. were raw, silly, over-the-top fantasy performers working the edge without a net on shoestring budgets. This was fertile ground for experimentation, and with the studio, Patrick was able to contribute unexpectedly sophisticated music and audio production. It was all a perfect match for Patrick's fun loving personality and creative nature, and his work reflected that vividly. At least that side of his personality, and then there was the dark (in the best sense of the word) world of leather bars, back rooms and bathhouses. This too, was a fantasy world. Also a parody, but as opposed to the overblown, absurdist focus on the feminine by the colorful, flamboyant drag performers in the alternative theater scene, this was the other end of the spectrum: hyper-masculine. These places were generally seedy, gritty, intentionally dimly lit places. Not truly dangerous, but the vibe was hot, sweaty and dirty. Patrick plunged into this world as it grew and it became a major part of his life. The soundtrack to places like the (in)famous Barracks bathhouse was generally R&B dance music. Naturally, Pat was inspired to do his own signature take on sex music and produced a series of tracks for gay porn films. His first attempts were song-based - sort of odes to sex, but he soon moved to more extended atmospheric pieces. He might create a 7-10 minute, multi-layer percussion bed and I'd lay a bass line groove over it. From there he would add layer on top of layer of synths, guitars, voices (spoken or sung), piano, whatever. On some of the tracks Josh found, all I recognize is the original part I laid down, as I often never heard the final mix. It's an odd feeling of simultaneous familiarity and discovery.
Occasionally, I could coax Pat into taking a money gig with me. Pat and I were the rhythm section in a band performing at The City disco in 1976. He was on drums and I was playing bass. We played our sets in the showroom and there was a full discotheque upstairs. We became friendly with one of the DJs and Pat got a part time job there running lights. Pat soaked up the music and vibe and began experimenting with remixing disco hits and adding his own tracks on top. Patrick, Arthur and I were listening to a lot of Isao Tomita, Weather Report, Kraftwerk etc. and all those influences were finding their way into our music. Patrick would be listening to something on the bus on the way over and that day create a piece that quoted the opening of An American in Paris or whatever. And we played off each other. Pat would sometimes create his own version of something Art and I had done. It wasn't mimicry. It was combining ingredients in new ways to create something fresh. One night Pat brought in some experimental dance music he had been working on using Art's new Oberheim DS-2 digital sequencer to a DJ at The City. It was so fresh and driving that it immediately became a staple of the night at The City. Pat made more and began to specialize in up-tempo, 150+bpm, "top-of-the-night" tracks used to peak the energy of the room. That was the root of what became known as Hi-NRG electronic disco. One evening the singer Sylvester came in and was so struck by Pat's combination of electronic sound effects and swirling, arpeggiating sequences that he went to the DJ to find out how to contact him. It's worth nothing that even as he was focusing on dance music, Pat never stopped experimenting. With his closest friend Jorge Socarras, he produced quite a few tracks of electronic-based art music, (eventually issued under the name Catholic) during the Plymouth Street period ('75-'79) and an album of Jorge's popular band, Indoor Life in 1980. And then there were the projects Pat would take on a whim. Such as the didgeridoo player he showed up with one day, who, in old-school Pat style, he had lay down multiple tracks of droning (that was a long day next door...) on top of which Pat piled layer after layer of synths to create something that no one in the Out Back had ever imagined. As Jorge observed, "An evening of nothing but Hi-NRG would ultimately have bored Patrick - just as any one flavor of sex would have."
Minna Street
Pat took the first money he made with Sylvester and bought himself basically an identical system to Art's. I had moved for a year to New York City and when I got back, Art had decided he wanted to live somewhere that wasn't a recording studio. So, for a short period we rented space in an industrial alternative art building on Howard at 10th Street called Project One. Patrick was working out of his flat, but while he was quite self-contained musically, he enjoyed working in a creative environment with other people around. Plus, his place was not conducive to four-on-the-floor disco pounding at all hours. With Patrick's band mate from Sylvester, Tip Wirrick, the four of us found a commercial building on 8th Street at the corner of Minna. This place has been described as a "bombed out building", but it was just a vacant storefront in a 2-story brick building with a commercial laundry next door. It was ideal for us. The downstairs was large enough for us to divide in two with a massive double wall and a 10" thick, sliding, soundproof pocket door. Pat and Tip took the front half and traded days. Art and I took the rear. We rented out the three spaces upstairs to help cover the rent. One of the first tenants was Nicolas Graham who started Joe Boxer as a necktie company up there. The other two were used as rehearsal rooms. The laundry next door never complained about the loud music because their operation was so loud and the large sliding door at the back was at street level on Minna, making loading gear in and out for gigging a breeze. Pat loved that we were a block and a half off of all the action on Folsom. It was a magic period of better gear and many creative people in an enabling environment. The drum machines appeared in 1981, the first of which we actually owned was an Oberheim DMX. We had used a LinnDrum on loan for a little while but it was a very expensive device (about $5000). When the DMX came out at about $3000, we took the plunge just about the same time we moved from the 1/4" 4-track Teac to the 1/2" Otari 8-trackrecorder. This was a huge leap for us. 8 tracks and the drum machine synched off it gave us seven tracks to work with and one we used for synch code to drive the drum machine, which allowed all the percussion to live off of the tape until final mix down. That meant no degradation of the sound, and even more importantly, the drums and percussion were now something that could change up until mix down.
The Death of Blip & Squeak
Ironically, as the development of Hi-NRG dance music was beginning to bear real fruit, the development of the technology that spawned it was instrumental in the death of it's own root -old school blip & squeak electronic music. The flip side of the primitive nature of the early synths that required so much effort to produce a single sound was that the sound itself tended to be as important as the notes. For a moment, a perfect balance of new, unique electronic sound applied to melodic music was achieved in the mid-'70s with the work of artists like Tomita. These were generally multi-tracked orchestration of (in Tomita's case, classical) music using synthesizers. As synths became easier to operate, the balance began to swing away from unique sounds and towards the integration of synths into pop music in increasingly standardized ways - the ubiquitous buzzy, slippery portamento MiniMoog solos, fat synth basses, etc. The synth was becoming a tool for making traditional music and the nail in the coffin of the promise of blip & squeak was the polyphonic synth, specifically the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. Up until the introduction of the Prophet 5, most synths were monophonic, capable of playing only one note at a time. A few, such as Art's Electrocomp system could play two notes at a time, and around 1975 Oberheim began producing a 4-voice polyphonic synth. But this system was actually 4 independent monophonic Oberheim SEM synths linked to the same keyboard. Each voice was still programmed independently. Art, of course, had to have one, but it was large, not all that stable yet or reliable. Art and I spent many an hour between a sound check and our set backstage coaxing one or more of the voices back to life. The Prophet 5 was a revelation in many ways. It was the first large-production synth to incorporate five voices, all programmed simultaneously, and just as ground breaking, one of the first to have a patch memory system, meaning not only was it quick to program five voices at once, but every patch could be recalled instantly with the push of a button. And it was compact, looking essentially like all modern keyboards. Every synth manufacturer followed with their very own version. The line had been crossed. From this point on, the divide between synthesizers and organ/piano-based keyboard instruments became increasingly blurred in concept, use and usability. Until then, using a synth required a specialized skill set. From this point on, synths came programmed with default, factory installed patches like a home organ. The synthesizer, which began as an endlessly flexible sound source with an optional keyboard controller attached, had been tamed. It was now just another instrument in the keyboardist's rack. Pat and Tip brought the first Prophets into the Minna Street studio. Art bought a Rhodes Chroma, quite a wonderful instrument, essentially a stack of ARP 2600s and a weighted, piano-style keyboard but, like the Prophet, with so much of the inner workings streamlined for ease of performance, it wasn't that programming friendly. Pat still made a lot of use of the monophonic synths in his work, particularly the ARP's arpeggiator function and the various sound effects so characteristic of his style. That purity made Pat's personal work stand out from the work he did with Sylvester, where he was, to a considerable degree, the icing on top of a traditional pop-format band. Pat's solo work and some of the New Wave art music of the period were basically the last gasp of the blip & squeak we had started out with. Electronic music had been assimilated into the pop music landscape.
Megatone
By this point Patrick had formed Megatone Records with Marty Blecman and his process became one where he used his studio to demo and then either took those tracks to a larger 24-track studio, usually the Automatt (formerly CBS) or simply recreated them there. Bouncing from the 8-track caused a small amount of degradation, but the drum machine tracks, synched to the time code on the 8th track went straight onto the 2" 24-track tape. Every vocalist always wanted to redo their original track in the big studio and of course all those extra tracks were very enticing for filling with layer upon layer of synths or vocals or guitars. Sometimes there was nothing left from the original tape by the time we got to mix down. Much of Pat's solo output was produced like this from that point. So were the records Art and I produced for Megatone (Shiver/SFX, JoLo etc.). Because so much of the final production process was happening outside of our studios in the final couple years, our archiving ends about this point. Tragically, another force came into play right about then. By the time Pat died of AIDS-related illness in the fall of 1982, he was one of the earliest, they had just come up with a name for it. Patrick's passing was part of a massive change in San Francisco that cannot be overstated. The party was over. It was a frightening time when we knew very little about HIV. There are still traces of 1970s San Francisco, but it will never be like it was before the AIDS epidemic. Patrick's San Francisco was a magical place. Not a fairyland (forgive the pun), but a bubble in time and space where the yin and yang mixed. Taken out of context, the tracks Josh has unearthed from the archives tell only part of the story they represent. Pat was always on the edge of something new. Even when his skills were still developing, his musical voice was expressing a fresh point of view from the crest of a wave of creative change that he rode to the end.
Arthur died from cancer in 1987. Tip had moved to Los Angeles the year before and I finally closed the Minna Street studio in late 1988 as the building was being sold. That was the end of that era for me. I doubt I'll ever have that type of musical partnership again. I miss them both still. I've had dreams over the years where one of them would appear and my reaction is always, "Finally! Now we can get back to work!" -Maurice Tani
Patrick Cowley - Muscle Up

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I attended my first Collinsville planning meeting for two fall events on May 16 where I learned about two important local events: the Turkey Trot and the Quilt Walk. The meeting was held in Collinsville's very own history museum. Board members and I sat at a handcrafted dark wood table donated by Bobby Elrod.
Sunday I attended the Harris Temple Church of God in Christ. I was somewhat nervous for a couple of reasons. I had not been to church in a long time, I did not know anyone who would be at the church, and I had never been to an African American church.


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Who should appear for NATA and why?
Students who are looking forward to take admission to 1st year of undergraduate course in Bachelor of Architecture in India should take up the NATA exam. NATA scores are taken into consideration for admissions into different Government, Government aided & unaided schools/colleges of Architecture in India. Architecture schools/colleges in India uses the NATA scores to measure and compare qualifications of students in addition to their academic performance in 12th standard or equivalent examination.
Any individual who has passed SSC (Std X) or equivalent examination or above can appear for the NATA exam. A person will be eligible for admission in B.Arch. course, if the candidate qualifies an aptitude test in architecture and secured a minimum of 50% in 10+2 or equivalent examination with Mathematics as one of the subjects. No direct lateral admission is allowed at any year/stage of B.Arch. course based on any qualification. A NATA candidate should be at least 17 years to be eligible to appear in the NATA exam. There is no upper age limit specified for NATA test yet. Students with 10+3 Diploma (in any stream) recognized by Central/ State Governments with 50% aggregate marks and International Baccalaureate Diploma, after 10 years of schooling, with not less than 50% marks in aggregate and with Mathematics as compulsory subject of examination, are also eligible for NATA exam.
The NATA score shall be valid for a period of two years from the year in which one appeared.
NATA Scoring Process
Drawing Test:
Each question in the 'drawing' exam is examined by a panel of three examiners independently and the marks are averaged. It may be further subject to moderation.
How the Drawing section is scored?
In the drawing test, the primary emphasis in scoring is measured based on the examinee's imagination, drawing, and observation skills. Also the examinee's sense of proportion & perspective is evaluated together with sense for color and composition.
Aesthetic Sensitivity Test:
During the computer based test, with adaptive testing, a candidate is administered a set of questions with a difficulty level that is specifically designed to match the examinee's ability level. The mathematical process for calculating a score in this situation incorporates the statistical properties of the questions, the examinee's performance on the questions, and the number of questions that are answered.
How the Aesthetic Sensitivity section is scored?
NATA Aesthetic Sensitivity section is scored in the following ways: The candidate's score will depend on his / her performance on the questions given and on the number of questions answered in the time allotted.
This section is computer adaptive, meaning that the computer selects questions based on the candidate's performance on preceding questions (When correct answer is given, next question will be of higher difficulty level whereas, if wrong answer is given next question is of lower difficulty level) and on the requirements of the test design. Test design factors that influence which questions are presented to the candidate include:
The statistical characteristics (including difficulty level) of the questions already answered. The required variety of question types. The appropriate coverage of content.
The final score depends on average difficulty level of all questions and of those questions answered correctly. E.g. person with correct answer for less number of questions of higher difficulty level may score higher marks than someone who answers more number of questions correctly but of lower difficulty level.
Time allotted to answer the question is between 60 and 90 seconds depending upon the question. The time remaining to answer the question is displayed on the screen. The 'per second' countdown begins 30 seconds before the allotted time for that question ends. In case no answer is offered till the time ends, the question is skipped and next question appears. There is no NEGATIVE marking in this test.
N.B. REVALUATION IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR EITHER OF THE TESTS.
What is the passing score at NATA?
As per admission guidelines of the Council of Architecture, a candidate should secure at least 40% score in NATA (i.e. 80/200) to be considered eligible for applying to any school/college of architecture in India, for B.Arch. course.
NATA Results
The score cards will be available online at http://www.nata.in, on fourth working day after the test. A candidate can check for his NATA score directly at the website http://www.nata.in using his/her candidate ID. Please note, print out of score card will be considered only for information and reference. However, candidates may use print out of this score card while applying for the admission if the admission authority calls for the same. The admission authority will retrieve and verify original score card directly from NATA server. The score card available on NATA server is valid and no print/hard copy will be considered valid. NATA score reporting is cumulative. The NATA score remains valid for a period of two years from the year in which the applicant appeared for the NATA exam. N.B. The score card are normally available on the dates specified. Occasionally, delay in processing may occur. If a candidate's score is not available even after 7 days, candidates need to follow the mentioned process given at the website www.nata.in.
Important Changes in NATA
Please note that the following changes are effective for NATA test starting from 1st April 2016.
Starting 1st April 2016 Candidates can attempt NATA for a maximum of 5 (FIVE) TIMES within Two Years from the date of their First attempt.
The best score out of the number of attempts till date will be the " VALID SCORE " ( Maximum of 5 ).
"Best of 5 attempts" system will be applicable for the NATA test given from 1st April 2016 .
" Validity of the "Best score" will be for 2 years from the date of their first attempt in 2016.
A new NATA Registration form is to be submitted online by the candidate at the NATA website for every attempt and the required Fee to be Paid for Every attempt.
The mark list will show the " best marks " scored by the candidate among all his previous attempts ( Maximum of 5 ) as "VALID SCORE"
For determining the " best of 5" for the students who appeared for NATA test before 2016, 5 ( Five ) more attempts will be allowed and their earlier "last valid score" also will be considered for obtaining the Best Score and for such students the validity of their "Valid score" will be 2 years from the date of their First attempt in 2016.
If any candidate is found registering afresh concealing the earlier appearance (including registered but exam not given cases ) for NATA test, he / she will forfeit his / her candidature and further his / her all previous scores will be cancelled and he / she will be barred from appearing for NATA again.
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Dark Knights Rising: The Wild Hunt #1 review
Casper Rudolph
Dark Knights Rising: The Wild Hunt #1 is a one-shot issue set between Metal #5 and #6. As such, it is safe to say that you would get the most out of this story if you are already invested in the Metal event, or at least have been following the core series. Additionally, it helps to have some prior knowledge about the DC Universe as a whole, because this issue is deeply rooted in DCU lore and features several somewhat obscure B and C-list characters. Furthermore, in my opinion, since the beginning of Metal all of it felt very Morrison-esque, especially because it is expanding—to a degree—on his Multiversity series. So it seemed odd that Morrison himself wasn't contributing to the event. Until now. Grant Morrison is, arguably, the biggest draw on this issue, because if there's anyone that can write some insane epicness, it's him. And yet, even with Morrison on scripting duties, this issue still suffers from some problems that I will detail below.
First of, as you can see in the image above, Scott Snyder, Grant Morrison, James Tynion IV and Joshua Williamson and are all listed under writing duties. While it's easy to distinguish the artists—Howard Porter, Doug Mahnke and Jorge Jiminez—because all three have such unique styles, it is rather unclear who wrote which section of the book. I am under the impression that Snyder, Williamson and Tynion put together the plot and that Morrison wrote the script for the entire issue, but I can't be 100% sure. I wonder why this isn't specifically pointed out in the credits, because I would certainly like to know for sure, mostly because I'm always interested to see who is responsible for which part of the product. Having said that, there are many passages that just scream Morrison because of the way that he talks about the quantum mechanics and interdimensional structures of the DC Universe.
The issue opens with a recap of Detective Chimp's origin story. The narration that runs through the pages is rather expositiony, but seeing as the comic has only a limited amount of pages and this is for the most part indeed a recap, I think that the narration is on point and manages to convey the most important parts effectively. By the end of the sequence, we're all caught up as to who Detective Chimp is, what the fountain of youth is and how it factors into Chimp's origin, and how Chimp gained enhanced intelligence. What I find interesting here is that the sequence seems to start out somewhat funny, even light-hearted, with Chimp playing the accordion, but the tone quickly transitions to rather dark and sad. However, some of these sad moments are lost on me because I never have the time to really get attached to certain characters or the relationship between these characters and Chimp, because almost no context is provided as to who the supporting characters are. Especially for new readers it would have been helpful to at least get some explanation. This makes me wonder if perhaps it would have been better if we had a book devoted to Chimp's origin so it could be expanded and made to have more emotional impact, although, on the other hand, I'm not sure if that really would be a wise move to make. After all, it would mean yet another tie-in upon a mountain of tie-ins.
Besides lacking the emotional impact that I was looking for, I do see that the origin explains and sets up what happens to Chimp toward the end of the story, and therefore it does contribute to the overall plot. Moreover, I see several connections between Chimp and other aspects and characters in Metal. For instance, Hawkman is an immortal being, and so too is Chimp immortal. Additionally, the issue opens with Chimp trying to play the notes D and C on an accordion. Of course these are the initials of Detective Chimp, but this also speaks to a much older notion (developed by Julius Schwartz and John Broome) that the D and C chords actually create the DC Universe. This is all fascinating stuff, and I would have loved to see this further developed, but as with the entire Metal event there is barely any room for further exploration of the idea because we have to move on to the next plot point.
We cut to Blackhawk Island, where we find Chimp playing a very high-tech looking keyboard, and we see the Metal Men as well. First of all, this is one of those instances where prior knowledge of the DCU would help, because most if not all characters here are B and C-listers. Secondly, the way this is written feels very Morrison, especially lines such as "I've made contact through layers of multiversal feedback with the Flash and the others" and "the challengers of the unknown used Red Tornado's wind harmonics as a guide to the House of Heroes." This sequence establishes that several scientists have discovered that the laws of physics are "falling like dominoes," and meanwhile Chimp attempts to contact Cyborg and the Flash. This scene mostly underscores that the entire universe is indeed at stake, and illustrates that the laws of physics are being altered because water starts boiling at 106 degrees now. However, as entertaining as I find the scene, especially the crafty dialogue, I can't help but feel like this entire scene was just implemented for the sake of one joke that I did not find very funny. I wonder if perhaps there would be a better way to show the shifting of laws of physics, avoiding the silly joke and thereby making this look much more poignant, and thus more like an actual threat to all of existence. It's no laughing matter, after all.
Next we find Flash, Cyborg and Raven aboard the Ultima Thule, a monitor shiftship, on their way to the House of Heroes as they travel through bleed space (a space between dimensions, basically). Here, the idea that the entire universe is living music is brought to the foreground. It perfectly aligns with the music themes of Metal. Flash even remarks that he would like to see if he could vibrate on a specific frequency to travel through this music, and, as a musician, I just get super excited about this idea. Once more I wish this was further expanded on, because I think it has great story potential.
A moment later the Wild Hunt zaps into the bleed space and comes after the heroes aboard the Ultima Thule. Then, for perhaps the first time, we actually see the Dark Batmen interacting with each other, and their banter is intriguing because essentially this is Bruce Wayne talking to himself. It's good stuff, because in a couple word balloons more personality is added to the Dark Batmen, something that I felt was missing from these characters up until now. For instance, the Devastator calls out Ms. Wayne (the Drowned) for potential mutiny, which speaks to the paranoid aspect of Bruce Wayne's psyche. This is immediately followed up by Ms. Wayne replying to Devastator that he knows exactly how she would kill him, just as she knows how each of the others would kill her. This then speaks to Batman's endless planning and knowing exactly how to combat his foes. It could be argued that this planning aspect comes from the paranoia, and in that sense we literally see different parts (albeit dark and twisted versions) of Bruce Wayne's mind interacting. Additionally, I've always found it interesting how Morrison is able to use exposition in a very entertaining way. His exposition always hints at things occurring off-panel, or outside of the story altogether, but instantly speak to the imagination and contribute to world-building. I am not entirely sure if this sequence is indeed written by Morrison, but it does seem to be his style.
Yet, there is something that strikes me as very odd in the following pages, and it is something that could potentially cause a very serious continuity error that may be difficult to fix. I will put this in spoiler tags, though, so only have a look if you have either already read the issue or you don't mind having this spoiled.
In Metal #5 Deathstroke and Aquaman are being attacked by Black Manta and several Dark Batmen, including Red Death. However, in Wild Hunt we see Red Death attacking Flash. Red Death and Flash are then both knocked to the ground, and Red Death is asking what happened to them. Flash explains to Red Death that he was hit by pure positive energy of creation, shifting his polarity, reversing him. What this means is that the Bruce Wayne side of Red Death is now gone, and that only Barry Allen is left, and he decides to help Flash defeat Devastator. A few pages later he is ripped apart because he is a being of darkness now charged with positive energy, and so Red Death dies. The question now is obvious: how is Red Death coming up against Deathstroke and Aquaman if he actually dies in Wild Hunt? Beyond his death, he also can't be in two places at once. It makes no sense. I'm honestly very confused at this point and have no idea how the writers are going to resolve this problem. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Looking at the writing as a whole, I have to say that by the end of the issue I feel exhausted. The narrative seems straight forward enough: the protagonists have to reach the House of Heroes but are being chased after by the Dark Batmen. And yet so much happens within the pages of this book that at times it can be hard to keep track of everything. Don't get me wrong, it is awesome, but this is by no means light reading and there are times where the issue crumbles under its own weight, trying to accomplish too much at the same time. I admire the skill that went into writing something as dense as this while keeping it entertaining, but if the issue wasn't so crammed with story and plot developments, it would have had more room to breathe and it would have been an easier read. Right now, it's rather convoluted, and I wouldn't blame anyone if they ended up confused at the end of the issue. This story certainly isn't for everyone, especially not for those who prefer their stories to stay grounded. This issue is anything but grounded: it is a wild ride across the cosmos, and it embraces its insanity on every front.
Part of the insanity, on a meta level, comes from the rotating artists. Howard Porter draws the Detective Chimp parts and Jorge Jiminez and Doug Manhke each draw portions of the Flash/Cyborg/Raven sequences. While each of these artists are absolutely amazing at what they do, the truth is that they each have completely different styles that don't compare well at all. On top of that, they are joined by different colorists as well. While the artwork never dips in quality, the distinctly different styles do make for a very unfocused and disjointed aesthetic. This doesn't help if the writing in the issue already goes into multiple directions at once. I'm convinced that visual consistency would have, in my opinion, made the overall product much better and the story, most likely, much easier to follow. We must not underestimate the degree to which artists contribute to the storytelling.
Recommended if…
You are a fan of Grant Morrison!
You have been collecting all the Metal comics
Stories just can't get cosmic, interdimensional and crazy enough
You don't mind visual inconsistency, as long as every individual artist does a stellar job
Overall: I like this comic. However, I feel that the comic is trying to do too much within the limited amount of pages. As such, it is all very compressed and convoluted, and may cause confusion here and there. Add onto this the serious continuity error that I pointed out in the spoiler section, and I'm really unsure about Metal's conclusion. Moreover, new readers will likely not know who some of the more obscure B and C-list characters are, and without further explanation the issue not exactly new reader friendly. Having said that, this comic really is a wild ride and has lots of fun moments that spark the imagination. As for a recommendation, I think this comic speaks to such a specific audience that I can't exactly recommend it to everyone out there. You really have to be into psychedelic, interdimensional stories that are in no way grounded. But if you really love this sort of thing, and are able to embrace the craziness, then you are likely to have a good time.
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