Energy analysis at the early stage of building design is a critical, yet difficult task in performance-based design. The difficulty arises from the complex, iterative, and uncertain nature of building design and the challenges of integration with well-posed energy assessment tools. The purpose of this article is to first review characteristics of performance-based design and... Read more »
Urban designers, architects, and planners are well versed in understanding how to shape, form, and adapt cities, but is there more to understand in how those cities are shaping their residents? Could lifespans be the best new urban design metric? This report summarizes a high-level urban analysis on the world’s longest-lived communities, commonly known as... Read more »
The human crowd simulator tool is a way for designers to measure, track and formulate understandings behind human crowd patterns and relationships. It maps and generates human movement patterns based on a series of parameters given to the tool via the script. The script parameters run on behavioral movement and science analysis, these parameters have... Read more »
Glare can cause annoyance and discomfort when it becomes the source of vision problem. Although discomfort glare has been studied extensively as an academic topic, evaluating the risk of glare and its mitigation strategies are limited in the architectural design process due to the lack of an established workflow. From building design perspective, architects tend... Read more »
The past 30 years has produced growing documentation of the numerous health benefits of nature. While this has reduced the demand for “proof” of the value of green space in healthcare settings, there remains a critical need for research that focuses on the design elements that can best serve specific patient populations. In the United... Read more »
Before stepping into the virtual world we needed to start in the physical world. This Incubator began by experimenting with different types of models and different methods of photographing these models. We discovered several things which would be usual to know for future photogrammetry work: Less is more – more photos do NOT give you... Read more »
The healthcare sector in Brazil usually does not use any kind of technology or software to change the experience of the client. During the Use and Occupancy Program discussions, an Excel spreadsheet with all the calculations and metrics or a Word document report are presented. The entire process of defining a hospital program and its... Read more »
So often our imagination is captured by the concept of unseen forces behind the workings of the world. Of course, we often think of the living environment when imagining these forces, but the cycle of decomposition is equally as graceful and important. In this case, the unseen hand behind the entire process is the simple... Read more »
The primary focus of this study is to determine how design decisions may influence human behavior. Specific characteristics of four recently built student residences at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will be evaluated. Each residence is a tower typology of roughly the same size and scale. Different design characteristics are present in each tower... Read more »
Our educational system is designed to provide age-appropriate learning from kindergarten through graduate school recognizing the human brain development cycle from birth to age twenty five. Age-appropriate education is critical at a young age, but as a student matures specific goals of attainment begin to blur with the recognition that some students are more gifted,... Read more »
Immersive Virtual Reality and Telemedicine is already in use by several Healthcare Institutions, but Architects and Designers, Governing Bodies, and Regulations may not be all in sync with the evolution of treatment methods. Some States and Countries are more prepared than others. However, we are still designing centralized Clinics and Hospitals for physical interaction with... Read more »
