Simulation of Building Physics for Beginning Design Students

Syracuse, NY

Concepts such as heat transfer, stack effect, natural ventilation, and other problems related to building physics are taught to beginning design students through architectural examples, deterministic diagrams, and rules of thumb. Unlike the approach to teaching form, which involves exploration and iteration within a studio environment, often suspending disbelief to allow exploration, these exercises see architecture through the lenses of optimization, equilibrium, and objective outcomes. They are taught as steady state concepts. Instead of leaning on teaching techniques derived from an engineering standpoint, often technocratic and deterministic, it would serve beginning design students well to explore these concepts through experimentation and scaled built models that demonstrate the intended atmosphere effect. Can we ask the students to think compositionally about an architectural atmosphere in the way we ask them to think about form, proportion, sequence, and hierarchy? The goal then is to have students learn to think about atmosphere and energy from a design standpoint. As Kiel Moe notes, this point of view comes from an understanding of architecture and energy as one of magnificence and not of management. (Moe, 2017) With the help of students at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, this research looks to explore reciprocal design techniques that allow students to iterate within an open system of their design. This ongoing investigation looks to grow the rigor and accessibility of scaled physical simulation of atmosphere and energy in buildings within a beginning design student studio.

https://surface.syr.edu/ibpc/2018/posters/30