A new luxury resort development situated near Zion National Park, Utah. The first phase of the scheme comprises 34 tent villas, reception, restaurants, spa, guest facilities and back-of-house areas.
The unique climate presented opportunities and challenges for the design team. XCO2 collaborated closely with the architects to ensure the buildings and systems performed efficiency during both the cold dry winter and the arid summer.
XCO2 provided environmental design guidance, energy and water strategies, masterplan MEP infrastructure guidance, and building services design for the scheme. Dynamic thermal models of the various buildings have been created using specialist software in order to calculate solar gains, air flows, energy demands and internal temperatures, enabling XCO2 to make recommendations for optimising performance of the buildings.
The villas are provided with high efficiency heating and cooling by an innovative underfloor and air based conditioning system, which maintains comfort and humidity levels throughout all seasons.
A displacement ventilation strategy was employed on both the public and resort restaurants. The low energy system makes use of natural convective air flow to create comfortable spaces for the guests and staff.
The resort will connect to the nearby community wastewater treatment plant and will utilise the treated water for irrigation and other non-potable uses. A nearby solar farm will provide 100% renewable energy to the development without impacting the view sheds of neighbouring properties.
The team is exploring integration of thin film photovoltaic panels into the tensile fabric roofs and other emerging technologies to supplement the on-site electricity supply and promote sustainability awareness for the guests.
