What You Can Do Now: Regenerative Design

Seth Dunn, AIA and Chris Fano, AIA, Siegel & Strain Architects

What is Regenerative Design? 

The goals of Regenerative Design are ambitious and go well beyond typical design briefs: to activate the capacity of complex systems to restore, repair, and sustain life on this planet. It aims to use human intervention to not just stop environmental degradation, but also to restore the relationships between natural, social, and man-made systems, and identify the unique value-adding role that each contributes to the larger whole. To do this, we must expand our skills as Architects, acting not only as project managers, but also as cultural incubators, active observers, and even community visionaries. Regenerative design is based on developing a knowledge of place, activating the healing potential within every project, and expanding our role as designers of a healthy, livable future.

Understanding Place 

One of the most important tenets of regenerative design is that the project itself is not the goal. A good building with all its merits and sustainable features, is merely a catalyst, a tool within a more complex and larger system. A perfect example is the Billion Oyster Project. The desired outcome is not the installation of a new reef, but the resultant habitat that is created for oysters to eventually clean and restore the Hudson River. To realize this kind of regenerative potential, that goes well beyond designing a building, the project must be deeply grounded in place. To know what a place needs, you must first understand its cultural, historical, and natural role within the greater environment. To gather this knowledge, it may be necessary to engage with a broad range of stakeholders who have intimate knowledge of a place or its features; botanists, indigenous tribes, historians, permaculture experts, local businesses, and nonprofits, to name a few. Working together, as co-designers and co-creators, the aim of this collaboration is to identify a rich sense of the Living Systems in which a project is nested. 

These systems are complex, interconnected, non-linear, and kinetic. They may be cultural, such as indigenous history; economic, such as a staple industry; or biological, such as a regional watershed. These systems are an extension of every site, and our actions are constantly influencing them, whether positively or negatively. Take, for example, a small residential remodel project on a quiet suburban street. While one could argue the carbon is spent, the development is complete, and the remodel is of little consequence, this small residence still exists within a complex web of systems that extend far beyond its site boundaries. The Quesada Gardens project in San Francisco’s Hunters Point Neighborhood exemplifies this type of broad systems thinking, where a trash laden median was transformed by two local residents into a community garden. What was once a piece of infrastructure eventually became a productive landscape that not only enhanced the local ecology, but also provided food, education, and joy to local residents. Regenerative thinking asks us as designers to find the ways in which our design interventions can have positive, synergistic and increasingly complex relationships with their larger context.

Stepping back from the project itself and observing these larger relationships that connect to the community or watershed often provide key insights. Everything in nature is based on connections between parts of a system. Regenerative thinking asks us to observe the intersection of webs present on a given site, and choose interventions that reinforce instead of impede those natural confluences. To better observe these relationships, start by asking these questions when in Pre-design (developed by Helen and Newton Harrison and catalyzed by the Regenesis Institute):

How big is “Here?”

▪       Find the scale and boundaries of the place, and its nested watershed, food systems, technological systems, material systems and local cultural systems.

▪       Possible Stakeholder Questions: How far out does the impact of the site extend? How far out do the systems that affect the site extend? What are the main inflows and outflows of resources on the site? Where do they originate, and lead?

How does “Here” work? 

▪       Find the patterns and relationships that permeate the place. These may be geographic, ecological, or cultural.

▪       Possible Stakeholder Questions: What is the carrying capacity of the site? Do you drive long distances to arrive onsite? How does the watershed flow and get replenished? Is the site limited in water, energy, or food? What are the key relationships on which the site depends?

What makes “Here” unique?

▪       How do the people who live in a place define it?

▪       Possible Stakeholder Questions: What do you love about this place that makes it special? How will this project enhance or contribute to the existing culture? How will it create collaboration and cooperative relationships so that what is here may stay here in perpetuity?

Through asking questions like these with your project team, you can expand an understanding of regeneration within the project and tap into the potential of a project to usher in positive change.

CASE STUDY

The Brattleboro Food Co-op has been a beloved grocery store in Brattleboro, VT since 1975. When it became clear they were exceeding the capacity of their existing space, the Co-op desired to build a new LEED certified grocery store that both reflected their values and continued to serve their community. Through a participatory design process with Regenesis Group, they realized this space could serve a fundamental role beyond simply being a green grocery store. The Brattleboro Food Co-op could serve as an anchor for the broader local food economy, supporting farmers, teaching cooking skills and serving as a hub to the downtown Brattleboro neighborhood. Through an analysis of place, the project evolved beyond a traditional grocery to include a commissary kitchen, cooking classrooms, and residential apartments above (that shared energy regeneration with the refrigeration system below). Opportunities were taken to achieve a project with ripple effects well outside the boundaries of the site, including analyzing where the food sold in store was originating. All this tied directly to the needs of the place and systems in which the store operated. Thinking about a project in this larger context allows an assessment of true impact and allows the Regenerative Potential of the project to emerge.

Identifying Potential

Regenerative design seeks fundamentally to tap into every project’s potential to allow living systems to co-evolve towards ever higher orders of diversity, complexity, creativity, and prosperity. This regenerative capability is the foundation upon which we build the project’s unique value-adding role, or the purpose it serves with a community. This is very different from a building’s function, which can evolve and change over time. The research gathered on the history and ecology of a place is pivotal to defining this role for a project. Furthermore, this role should focus on the image of the future the project wants to create, the end-state that will benefit the systems in which it is nested long after the punch list is complete. For projects that require it, community engagement early and often in the design process can be instrumental in defining this role. Using the How Big is “Here” framework can help identify the parameters and living systems in your project, while simultaneously identifying the needed repairs to these systems.

CASE STUDY

A project currently in Schematic Design here at Siegel & Strain Architects was given the task of transforming an existing Coast Guard Housing development into a Zero-Net Energy affordable housing project. Through a participatory design process with project stakeholders and community groups, information was gathered on what residents in the nearby town valued about their community, what they felt was lacking, and what they hoped to see through the proposed project. A multi-lingual, multi-disciplinary outreach effort sought input through drawing, mapping, listening sessions, and knowledge sharing. As a result, it was determined that in addition to farmworker housing to serve the local agriculture economy, an Education Center would be created to provide ancillary support to the local community. This space would offer after school programs, a native teaching garden, edible landscapes, a maker space, and a lending library. In addition to housing, which is its function, the project would also act as a resilience hub, and provide emergency off-the-grid power, EV charging, cooling, dry goods storage, and other benefits in the face of a changing climate. While providing much needed housing, the project also responds to other local needs and realizes its potential to serve a broader purpose. In addition, the residents who live in this development will gain formative life skills that will impact the community at large, thus tapping into multiple economic, cultural, and biological systems within the site.

Expanding the role of the Architect

An understanding of place and a realization of its unique potential necessitates a more nuanced approach to site analysis. As the design team begins its Pre-Design assessment, a regenerative approach will demand additional research on not just the prevailing winds and sun, but also the history, culture, economy, hydrology, and biology of the site and its context. We must also pay attention not only to the systems that flow in and out of a site, but also to the people who inhabit it. This type of listening requires that we see every place in all its complexity. Our tendency as architects is to want to simplify. But that reductionist approach to the world is exactly what has caused the cascading degradation we see around us. The community development practitioner and regenerative specialist Beatrice Benne advocates for the opposite. To respond to the challenges of our time, she argues, we need to increase the capacity of the systems we create to deal with complexity. Our work exists within complex systems, and to reverse the damage we see to our environment, we must start every project by understanding those systems. This does not necessarily mean increasing the complexity of our projects, but instead looking for and making the key interventions to allow for complex systems to develop and flourish on their own.

Our role as the designer is to facilitate dialogue between stakeholders and draw them into the project as co-creators and collaborators. Working with an expanded stakeholder group during the pre-design process helps define the project’s value adding role. The most sustainable building, designed for net zero with rainwater catchment, carbon sequestering structural systems, and drought tolerant landscaping, may still increase traffic, displace residents, or be out of scale with its neighbors. Our role should be to understand from stakeholders what these issues are and address them in our designs. We must become active observers, listening to and understanding the local solutions each place inspires and requires.

More thoroughly defining the project may take more time early in the design process but prevent redesign and extensive changes later in the process. The greater the up-front investment amongst key stakeholders, the greater the chance of success when the project meets the realities of schedules, budgets, and regulations in later phases of design and construction. Set a goal of improving the local economy, a local ecosystem, or enriching a specific community. Plan a project schedule with a 5-, 10-, or 20-year target through which some positive change can be measured. In the most successful regenerative projects, the design and building process acts as a catalyst for a further regeneration, allowing communities to thrive and contribute to their ecological and cultural niche. This means that we as the Architect must create the framework that allows cultural and natural regeneration to occur and develop new life far after the project is complete.

At its core, Regenerative Design is about designing not just sustainably, but also responsibly, and in harmony with nature. The philosopher Alan Watts said, “It is absolutely absurd to say that we came into this world. We didn’t. We came out of it”. We must see ourselves as part of nature if we are to design a healthy, livable future with it. Through regenerative thinking, early in the design process, the goal is to understand how the individual parts interact with the greater whole, and to put in place, through our understanding and action, the conditions needed for life to heal itself.

Things You Can Do Right Now to Use Regenerative Design in Architectural Practice

1. Listen and observe to truly understand a place. Every project has a “here”.
2. In addition to the usual site analysis, conduct a systems analysis at the start of every project to understand the impact it has beyond the site boundaries. Observe the relationships between your project and its context.
3. Think about your project’s higher potential to evolve future systems complexity.
4. You and your project stakeholders should develop a statement and guiding concept that identifies the essential value-adding role of your project that goes beyond just its function. Test this statement against the values, motivations, and traditions of the community it is nested in.
5. Once you understand your project’s value adding role, identify metrics that can be used to hold the project accountable. These might be adopted from Living Building Challenge or LEED, for example, but may also be unique and project specific.
6. Partner with local stakeholders and community groups to understand what a place needs and ensure those needs can be met long after construction is complete.
7. Understand your role is to bring forth what is needed in each place, in a given time. Think less like a designer, and more like a co-designer with nature.
8. Understand your project is just the beginning of the process and should be a catalyst for evolutionary change.
9. Don’t stretch too far. The change should be achievable, or the process can lose momentum.
10. Build a field of optimism, energy, and excitement about the potential of the project. Sustain this energy through the design process by keeping it achievable, and frequently envision the healthy, livable future you are trying to create.

Resources

• John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2016
  Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability. 
• Regenesis Institute for Regenerative Practice, 2019
  The Regenerative Practitioner Series
• Cambridge University Press, 2016
  The Systems View of Life. 
• Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2018
  Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. 
• Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2020
  The Regenerative Life: Transform Any Organization, Our Society, Your Destiny
• Regenerative Buildings Master Class [online], 2021
  GBES.com
• Research Gate, 2012
  Regenerative Development and Design
• The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast
  Developing the Practice of Regeneration with Bill Reed, Episode 22
• AIA Blueprint for Better
  The Rise of Regenerative Design
• Espace Sculpture, 2012
  Newton & Helen Mayer Harrison: How Big Is Here? pp. 26–27

Authors

Seth Dunn, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, LFA is a Bay Area based Architect and Regenerative Practitioner. Seth leads teams of Landscape Designers, Permaculturists, Civil, Structural and MEP engineers from Schematic Design through construction on sustainable projects that support the greater community.

Chris Fano, AIA, LEED GA, has brought ecological systems thinking into each of his projects over his 15 year career. He has worked on modular eco-homes, straw bale and rammed earth residences, passive remodels, and net zero affordable housing projects, and is currently pursuing both LFA and Passive House Certification.

Seth Dunn & Chris Fano are project architects and regenerative practitioners at Siegel & Strain Architects.

What You Can Do Right Now: Carbon Storing Materials

By David Arkin, AIA, and Bruce King, P.E.

7/18/22

What are Carbon Storing Building Materials?

All building products have a carbon footprint—the greenhouse gas emissions from extracting raw materials, transporting and processing them, and transporting the finished product off to the building site — also called embodied carbon. For an average building in North America, the whole building footprint is typically 300 to 400 kg CO2e/m2. (Conversations about buildings and carbon are almost always in metric, so North Americans need to be careful to convert from Imperial units when necessary) Smaller-scale, primarily wood-framed buildings average closer to 200 kg CO2e/m2.

Bio-based materials and products are made from plants that have via photosynthesis pulled carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, released the oxygen, and used the remaining carbon to build their cells, effectively storing this carbon in the trunk, branches or stalk. When a plant dies and decays, some of the carbon is stored in the soil while the rest is released back into the atmosphere. If these plant resources are instead harvested and converted into a building product, the carbon is effectively stored for the life of the building.

Some of the stored carbon is negated by carbon emitted during harvest, process, transport, and installation. Plants with a longer cycle for renewal (trees, that is, averaging 40 years) will lose their carbon removal benefit as living resources when cut, while rapidly-renewable resources that grow and die on a shorter cycle have greater potential for carbon drawdown. Thus, the greatest opportunity for global drawdown is in faster-renewing bio-based resources such as hemp, bamboo and straw, rather than timber. Further, softwood forests only exist in limited parts of the Earth, while grains are grown almost everywhere. Straw is abundant and ubiquitous, while forests no longer are.

What are the impacts / Why is it important?

Our most common building products typically have a big carbon footprint, especially cement and steel, both because of the production energy required and for their massive widespread uses. Petroleum-based resources such as plastics and foam insulation have large footprints as well, in addition to their other toxic by-products and grievous harm to aquatic ecosystems. Widespread use of these carbon-intensive products during construction—while often used in the interest of energy efficiency—put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere now, a time when we should be significantly decreasing emissions to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

Using carbon-storing resources in place of these “big ticket” emitters, or at least choosing the lowest embodied carbon options (low-carbon concrete and cellulose insulation, for example), has the potential to turn buildings into the earth’s sixth carbon sink. This, along with reasonably efficient all-electric buildings powered with renewable energy sources, are our best path to a sustainable future.

What’s changed?

Not long ago the focus of green building was almost solely on increasing energy efficiency and using renewable energy. Both of those remain very important, especially in the energy upgrade of existing buildings, but the embodied carbon or “up front” impacts of the materials are now recognized as equally if not more important. Carbon storing construction has a primary a role to play in achieving true zero net carbon buildings.

Taking this a step further: minimally processed bio-based resources that maintain soil health through regenerative agriculture or sustainable forest management can more than double the carbon taken out of the atmosphere. Trees—which have a longer cycle to harvest—are more effective at pulling carbon from the atmosphere towards the end of this cycle, and are often best left to grow and continue absorbing carbon in favor of annual resources such as straw, the by-product of growing food. Mycelium, enzymes, bacteria and other microbial life forms are also emerging in building products as potential mass drawdown “partners”.

Costs

Beginning with insulation: Plant-based insulation often has a lower R-value, and requires additional thickness to meet an assembly’s thermal needs. For straw or hempcrete, this could make for a 10% larger footprint for the same interior space. However, the thermal mass effect and other health benefits provide a sort of happy offset to both the occupants and the planet.

Materials that can be swapped for similar systems (e.g. mass timber or mass bamboo instead of concrete or steel; cork rather than foam insulation board, etc.) shouldn’t have differing labor costs, and with scale material costs will drop as well. Unfamiliarity with these resources can result in contractors and subcontractors charging additional to factor for ‘unknowns’, but with experience will find there’s little difference. Education for the design and engineering team will follow a similar arc.

Carbon storing resources need not exact a premium in cost. The Mahonia Building, a 34,000-sf mixed-use warehouse and office building in Eugene, OR was built for $147 per square foot. The second and third floors of office space were built with typical wood framing—2×6 studs 24” on center with plywood sheathing—and infilled with BOEBS (bales on end between studs), finished with clay plaster, with some of the clay harvested from the site excavation. Clad with steel, these walls still stored 12 tons of CO2, but had they been built with more typical steel stud framing, fiberglass and foam insulation, and gypsum board, these same walls would have emitted 60 tons, and they would have cost more as well.

Where to start and things you can do right now

1.    Start by understanding the embodied carbon impacts of the materials we typically build with and then focus on reducing those impacts: Use less, use better versions, and to the extent feasible utilize ultra-low carbon and carbon-storing resources instead.

2.    Insulation and cladding are some the easiest places to integrate carbon-storing alternatives. For example using dense pack cellulose insulation instead of fiberglass or foam insulation products substitutes a carbon storing resource at little if any added cost. Cladding with wood or cork rather than metal or stucco is another example.

3.    Utilize Embodied Carbon accounting tools to measure your progress, which will help prioritize offsetting carbon-emitting materials with some that store carbon.

4.    Target an achievable goal: 75 kgCO2e/m2 represents a very good building (400 is average for larger buildings; 200 for wood-framed residential).

5.    Challenge your team to explore what a carbon-storing version of a current project might look like, and then implement what strategies the project can allow.

6.    Document your efforts and share them.

Links Resources and Tools

Links – Importance of Bio-Based Construction in Addressing Climate Change:

Build Beyond Zero: New Ideas for Carbon-Smart Architecture

February 2021 CLF Report

Carbon-Storing Materials

August 2021 CLF Report:

Transformative Carbon-Storing Materials: Accelerating an Ecosystem

Building with Biomass: Turning Buildings into Carbon Sinks

Financial Times – Dec. 3, 2021

Straw-inspiring: houses made of the humble bale by Paul Miles

AIA.org – May 2022

Buildings Must Become the Earth’s Sixth Carbon Sink by William Richards

The Architectural Review – June 15, 2022

The short straw: bio-based construction by Dominique Gauzin-Muller

Builders For Climate Action – 2019

White Paper #1 Low-Rise Buildings as a Climate Change Solution

Builders For Climate Action

Emissions of Materials Benchmark Assessment for Residential Construction

Natural Resources Canada – Builders For Climate Action

Achieving Real Net-Zero Emission Homes: Embodied carbon scenario analysis of the upper tiers of performance in the 2020 Canadian National Building Code

Yearbook 2020 Supporting the Use of Straw in Urban and Public Buildings (UK)

What You Can Do Now: Incorporate Energy Efficiency into Tenant Improvement and Renovation Projects with Integrated Systems Packages

Paul A. Mathew, Ph.D
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

What are Integrated System Packages?

Upgrading existing commercial buildings through energy efficiency retrofits will be a key component of decarbonizing the building sector to fight climate change. Yet, despite the evidence and widely available technology, the inconveniences and costs associated with efficiency retrofits are standing in the way of broad adoption. Integrated System Packages (ISPs), developed by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with support from the Department of Energy (DOE), are quasi-standardized retrofit packages that can be seamlessly integrated into the real estate lifecycle – during tenant fit-outs and renovations. These packages enable easier and cheaper energy upgrades for office buildings by reducing disruption to building occupants and cutting costs.

Why Are They Important?

Energy efficiency retrofits are most commonly approached as standalone engineering projects, which, when implemented one after the other, are highly disruptive to building occupants and activities. Systems-based efficiency approaches are becoming increasingly recognized as the most effective method for deeper energy and cost reductions. However, systems-based approaches often require significant engineering expertise for proper design, integration, commission, and operation. That’s where ISPs come in. ISPs can be incorporated into standard real estate lifecycle events – tenant improvements, equipment replacement, and renovations — to reduce disruption to building occupants, and the pre-engineered nature of the packages minimizes additional expertise and costs.

LBNL has developed ISPs for three common real estate events: tenant fit-out, rooftop unit (RTU) HVAC replacement, and full building renovation.

What are the different types of ISPs and their impacts?

Tenant Fit-Out ISP:

The Tenant Fit-Out ISP can be incorporated into a routine tenant improvement. The package includes (a) lighting upgrades, such as LED fixtures, occupancy-based controls, and daylight dimming controls, (b) HVAC controls upgrades in line with ASHRAE Guideline 36, and (c) energy monitoring. The HVAC controls include trim and response for supply air temperature and duct static pressure, demand-controlled ventilation, intermittent ventilation, and zone sequences. Optional measures include network lighting control systems, plug load controls, automated interior shades, and ceiling fans. Simulation analysis showed significant energy savings associated with the Tenant Fit-Out ISP, which were then validated by laboratory testing in LBNL’s FLEXLAB. The laboratory results show lighting energy savings from 69-84%, HVAC savings from 20-40%. The simulation results show whole-building energy savings from 23-38%.

Roof Top Unit (RTU) Replacement ISP:

The RTU ISP can be integrated into an RTU replacement project. This package includes a high-efficiency RTU, advanced controls based on ASHRAE Guideline 36, and energy monitoring. Optional measures include window films and cool roofs to reduce the HVAC load. Simulation and laboratory results showed 12-18% energy savings from the RTU Replacement ISP.

Building Renovation ISP:

Any routine building upgrade can incorporate the Building Renovation ISP. This package includes LED lighting and daylight dimming controls, high-efficiency RTUs, HVAC controls based on ASHRAE Guideline 36, and energy monitoring. Optional measures include ceiling fans, automated interior shades, window films, cool roofs, and plug-load controls. Simulation results showed the savings associated with this ISP range from 25-45%.

For the ISPs with RTU replacements, projects are strongly encouraged to consider all-electric replacements, with heat pump RTUs instead of furnace-based heating. In fact, California’s Title 24 code requires all-electric replacements for packaged units depending on size and location, starting January 2023.

ISPs in Action

CBRE – a large property management company and partner in the development of ISPs – manages several properties for a financial institution in the Southeastern U.S. When one property, a bank in Birmingham, was planning facility renovations for exterior lighting and rooftop solar PV, CBRE saw an opportunity to pilot the Tenant Fit-Out ISP. With the addition of the ISP, the project scope was expanded to include interior lighting upgrades, including LED lighting and daylight-based dimming, and HVAC controls upgrades based on ASHRAE Guideline 36, including static pressure reset, heating lockout, zone-based scheduling, optimized start, and widening deadband to 4°F.

Since the bank did not have an energy monitoring system and was not large enough to justify an installation, CBRE used interval data from the utility to measure energy consumption loads and savings from the upgrades. The savings calculations showed 25% energy savings for the entire retrofit – 6% from the exterior lighting upgrade and 19% from the additional ISP measures.

CBRE gave the lighting and HVAC contractors Tenant Fit-Out ISP template specifications for the renovations. While straightforward for the lighting upgrades, the HVAC controls specification did require some customization because the Guideline 36 measures depend on which HVAC system is used. Since the pilot in Birmingham, LBNL has developed an ‘ISP specifications generator tool’ that allows users to base ISP specifications on the specific characteristics of a site. Full toolkits are now available for all ISPs. Chris Pelrine, the Director of Energy Sustainability at CBRE said: “the ISP toolkits offer the ability for project developers and planners to easily apply energy efficient standards into the design specifications of the project. The toolkits will not only streamline project execution but will also allow the planner to estimate the energy savings. This will aid in the approval of any potential cost increase due to installing energy-efficient equipment.”

By integrating the Tenant Fit-Out ISP into a routine renovation, the Birmingham bank was able to achieve 19% higher energy savings. What’s more, the expanded project led to minimal additional disruptions or costs because contractors were already in place for the exterior lighting upgrades and rooftop solar installation.

In summary:

Energy efficiency retrofits will be a critical part of the U.S. building sector reducing its carbon emissions to meet climate goals. By integrating ISPs into the standard real estate lifecycle, these retrofits no longer have to be expensive special projects that disrupt building occupants and activities. Furthermore, the standardized efficiency packages streamline the retrofit process and reduce engineering requirements. Put simply, ISPs make energy efficiency easier and cheaper for building architects, owners, and occupants. To learn more, please check out the ISP toolkits at LBNL’s website: https://buildings.lbl.gov/cbs/isp.

Get started right now

1. If you are designing routine tenant fit-outs, RTU replacements, or full renovations for a building, consider incorporating an ISP into the process to enable deeper energy and cost savings. Check the applicability guides for the ISPs. Use the specifications templates to reduce the level of design and engineering effort.
2. Explore the ISP toolkits online at: https://buildings.lbl.gov/cbs/isp.
3. Share knowledge about ISPs with owners and other stakeholders.

Resources

1. Integrated System Packages, LBNL website: https://buildings.lbl.gov/cbs/isp
2. CBRE case study
3. Energy Efficiency Package for Tenant Fit-Out: Laboratory Testing and Validation of Energy Savings and Indoor Environmental Quality. Energies 2020, 13(20), 5311; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13205311.
4. Package deals for deep savings: Scaling deep retrofits in commercial buildings with integrated systems packages. ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. August 2020. Technical Report