Why does no digital platform attempt to present all performance and sustainability characteristics for building materials in a way that side by side comparison is possible? Is the breadth of data too difficult to model? If the data could be visualized, what would it reveal? This article describes a digital platform with criteria that represents:... Read more »
The challenges of a warm climate on urban buildings’ energy needs for space conditioning are discussed by assessing the impact of intra-urban microclimatic changes, also called urban heat islands (UHI). This article analyzes the results of a simulation study on the energy consumption required for heating and cooling a small office building within five intra-urban microclimatic conditions of... Read more »
This article describes research on using local interactions to generate intricate global patterns and emergent urban forms. An agent-based system (ABS) is used to optimize an urban network and construct the micro-level complexity within a simulated urban environment. The author focuses on how agent-driven emergent patterns can evolve during the simulation in response to the “hidden hand” of... Read more »
This article documents the use of Grasshopper and Galapagos (Rhino plugins) as analytical tools to graphically represent and optimize the adjacency requirements in programmatic spaces. The resulting three-dimensional spatial diagrams are evaluated based on evolutionary fitness, which within this research context is defined as minimizing the numerical value of the total distance of all interconnected programmatic elements. This... Read more »
The growing demand for high-performance buildings has pushed the architectural discipline to confront building performance as an integral part of design delivery, while increasing the necessity of collaboration between designers, building science experts, engineers, and manufacturers to find the best solutions to building performance challenges. At Kansas State University, a year-long research studio worked with professionals, consultants, and a... Read more »
As the Earth’s climate changes and sea waters rise, the world’s many coastal cities must get creative to stay afloat. Levees, floodwalls, and other man-made infrastructure are enormous cost burdens that continue to be overpowered by super storms and severe flooding. Planners and designers around the country are exploring methods to make coastal cities more resilient to these... Read more »
This article outlines the use of operational planning and simulation modeling as a lean tool within Perkins+Will, to determine the room utilization and staffing for a large trauma center, based on current and projected volumes and turnaround times. A specific area of focus was the Resuscitation Rooms and their location within the emergency department (ED). In its most... Read more »
The focus of this article is the open building concept in multi-family residential architecture. The article analyzes and examines two specific projects: the Solid Oud West in Amsterdam (2010) and the Plus Home experience in Helsinki (2005). By the analysis of these projects, the article seeks to define the state-of-the-art in open building practice, and aims to expose... Read more »
Increasing occurrences of natural disasters and effects of climate change are creating more pressure to design resilient buildings that can withstand and adapt to changing risks, while being sustainable and creating healthy environments. A key challenge to the implementation of resilient design is perceived viability and how to incorporate and communicate the long-term benefits into the equation. This project,... Read more »
The U.S. healthcare industry is undergoing the transformation of a century. The move away from the fee-for-service payment model and the Affordable Care Act are driving a paradigm shift towards disease prevention and population health management with services increasingly delivered in lower-cost, community-based settings. Redefining healthcare typologies and planning methods is an integral part of... Read more »
Current research on the impacts of landscape architecture on children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are surprisingly lacking, considering the believed benefits of the natural environment on individuals with special needs. This study examines how outdoor design elements benefit children with ASD and specifically, how these design criteria can be implemented to inform the design... Read more »
