The experience design agency HUSH helps a net-zero building explain its inner workings through a brilliant ?energy dial? In the United States, buildings account for nearly 40 percent of carbon emissions mostly due to the energy required to heat, cool, and illuminate them. But the ?Unisphere??a new office building on the biotech company United Therapeutics?s Silver Spring, Maryland, campus?stands apart.
Thanks to a number of low- and high-tech design details, the 210,000-square-foot space has achieved net-zero status; it creates as much, if not more, energy than it consumes.
Instead of letting the building?s climate-change-busting systems work silently and invisibly in the background, United Therapeutics decided to turn the structure into an interpretive experience. The building announces to its occupants how much energy it makes and uses to help people understand and conserve resources. These visualizations, created by the experience design agency HUSH, include a sundial-like ?energy dial? sculpture, interactive digital screens throughout the building, and light animations.
Nicholas Cope
The Unisphere, a net-zero building designed by EwingCole, features an interactive ?energy dial? sculpture by HUSH in its soaring atrium.

The architecture and engineering firm EwingCole fitted the building with over 3,000 solar panels; built a quarter-mile-long concrete ?maze? under the structure to use the earth?s thermal mass to cool air for ventilation; ...