CSC Design Studio

OUR PRACTICE
The CSC Design Studio is a full service architecture and urban development firm with 30 years of award-winning sustainability-driven design and environmental management experience. Using advanced energy-efficient building standards and technologies, we specialize in the integrated design, modeling and management of affordable net-zero energy buildings within sustainable communities. We offer LEED, Passive House, and energy modeling consulting and design services for residential and commercial projects, and comprehensive sustainability planning for urban projects.

OUR PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT
Richard S. Levine, is an environmental architect, solar energy and sustainability pioneer, and professor at the University of Kentucky. He is one of the early solar energy innovators in the U.S., a holder of U.S. patents on structural systems and solar energy applications, and the architect of a number of award winning solar buildings including his widely published Raven Run Solar House. In 2010 he was named a “Passive Solar Pioneer” by the American Solar Energy Society. Levine is a member of the Kentucky Chapter of the US Green Building Council’s LEED advisory committee. He is co-director of the Center for Sustainable Cities at the University of Kentucky, which specializes in the social and economic development of sustainable communities. His contributions to sustainable urban planning are in both the theory and practice of the sustainable city-region. He has over 200 publications on sustainability research, conducted in the United States, Italy, Austria, China and the Middle East.

OUR PROJECTS
The CSC Design Studio is a versatile firm with experience in seamless integration of environmental management and ecological design. Our staff consists of architects and urban designers as well as community and economic development professionals. We refer to our development work as "sustainability-driven," recognizing that the scale of the single building is inadequate to comprehensively address sustainability. Nevertheless, buildings account for nearly 40% of energy consumption in the US - more than in any other sector. We see energy & carbon neutrality in architecture as a powerful point of leverage for energy independence, community development, environmental protection, and economic advantage. The CSC Design Studio is one of a few architectural practices in the United States and the only firm in Kentucky to employ the Passive House Standard, the most rigorous energy standard for residential and commercial building design in the world. This standard can be met either by new construction or deep energy retrofits to existing buildings. Because of an integrated design approach, our Passive House designs require 90% less energy for climate control, and 75% less total energy compared to standard new construction. When buildings are designed from such an efficient standard, remaining energy needs can be obtained by an affordable photovoltaic array to achieve net-zero energy. The CSC Design Studio is itself headquartered in a pair of net-zero energy buildings, with annual electricity consumption offset by a photovoltaic array installed in 2009.

OUR RESEARCH
Over 25 years ago, Levine and his colleague Ernest J. Yanarella, founded the Center for Sustainable Cities at the University of Kentucky. Through two decades of international research and development projects, the Center has identified the city-region as the scale at which homeostatic relationships between social, environmental and economic issues can reach dynamic balance. This research resulted in the formation of an Operational Definition of Sustainability--a still unmatched achievement in the field of sustainability theory. The Operational Definition served as the underpinning of the Aalborg Charter, part of the United Nations Agenda 21 framework for the delivery of local sustainable development. The CSC Design Studio offers unparalleled integration of cutting edge community environmental stewardship and affordable ecological design. This pioneering work is the foundation of urban development projects in China, the Middle East, Austria, Italy, and the United States.