Purpose -This paper aims to examine how US architectural programs are addressing environmental imperatives through curricular-based initiatives. It offers a brief overview of how environmentally conscious design education has evolved and compares curricular approaches to social, aesthetic, and technical sustainability education from six architecture programs considered to be national leaders in sustainability education. Design/methodology/approach -Views from leading architectural programs on sustainable education were compiled and assessed leading to a curricular study of course and degree offerings. Findings -It was found that four consistent approaches to undergraduate sustainable design education are being promoted: core value: all course content addresses sustainable design; systems-focused: support courses fulfill needs for sustainable education; choice: sustainable education is through student selection of courses offerings; and specialization: sustainable education is a specialty endeavor mainly at the graduate level and in concert with centers or institutes. A new "composite" approach to sustainable design education is outlined. Research limitations/implications -Conclusions about architectural curricula were drawn from the assessment of a limited number of representative programs. The findings demonstrate that a technical-course based approach from the specialist perspective still dominates most architecture programs. Practical implications -The paper contributes to discourse on sustainability by examining how leading US architectural programs are currently addressing environmental imperatives through curricular-based initiatives. Social implications -This paper concludes that a culturally based approach from a generalist perspective which encompasses systems knowledge and interactions among many disciplines is needed in design education. Originality/value -Beyond architecture, the findings will be useful to many disciplinary domains considering the transition to a stronger, more fully integrated, environmentally focused curriculum.
This paper discusses adding a spatial dimension to the design of community microgrid projects in the interest of expanding the existing discourse related to energy performance optimization measures. A multidimensional vision for designing community microgrids with higher energy performance is considered, leveraging urban form (superstructure) to understand how it impacts the performance of the system’s distributed energy resources and loads (infrastructure). This vision engages the design sector in the technical conversation of developing community microgrids, leading to energy efficient designs of microgrid-connected communities well before their construction. A new generation of computational modeling and simulation tools that address this interaction are required. In order to position the research, this paper presents a survey of existing software packages, belonging to two distinct categories of modeling, simulation, and evaluation of community microgrids: the energy infrastructure modeling and the urban superstructure energy modeling. Results of this software survey identify a lack in software tools and simulation packages that simultaneously address the necessary interaction between the superstructure and infrastructure of community microgrids, given the importance of its study. Conclusions represent how a proposed experimental software prototype may fill an existing gap in current related software packages.
In the era of ecological and economic crisis, while the trend has drastically changed, most single-family houses in the United States are still built in a conventional way. The problem has roots in the fact that ecologically sustainable buildings are o ften initially more costly compared to ordinary ones. In a number of studies, lower life-cycle cost and longer economic life of sustainable buildings have been considered as a beneficial effect on the cost, having a positive impact in the real estate market of green residential properties. On the other hand, there has been research discussing the impact of architecture and architectural decisions on real estate and marketing of the buildings. Yet a lack of research investigating the importance of architecture in the marketplace of green buildings especially homes is evident.This study presents current literature and an analysis of the building appraisal process in different locations and mainly in the United States with special attention to the residential sector. The theoretical conclusion finds that architectural decisions can have a positive impact on the price of sustainable homes. This paper finally suggests direction for future research to be conducted in the interest of empirically proving this finding.
Building energy modelling has become an integral part of building design due to energy consumption concerns in sustainable buildings. As such, energy modelling methods have evolved to the point of including higher-order physics, complex interconnected components and subsystems. Despite advances in computer capacity, the cost of generating and running complex energy simulations makes it impractical to rely exclusively on such higher fidelity energy modelling for exploring a large set of design alternatives. This challenge of exploring a large set of alternatives efficiently might be overcome by using surrogate models to generalize across the large design space from an evaluation of a sparse subset of design alternatives by higher fidelity energy modelling or by using a set of multi-fidelity models in combination to efficiently evaluate the design space. Given there exists a variety of building energy modelling methods for energy estimation, multi-fidelity modelling could be a promising approach for broad exploration of design spaces to identify sustainable building designs. Hence, this study investigates energy estimates from three energy modelling methods (modified bin, degree day, EnergyPlus) over a range of design variables and climatic regions. The goal is to better understand how their outputs compare to each other and whether they might be suitable for a multi-fidelity modelling approach. The results show that modified bin and degree day methods yield energy use estimates of similar magnitude to each other but are typically higher than results from EnergyPlus. The differences in the results were traced, as expected, to the heating and cooling end-uses, and specifically to the heat gain and heat loss through opaque (i.e., walls, floors, roofs) and window surfaces. The observed trends show the potential for these methods to be used for multi-fidelity modelling, thereby allowing building designers to broadly consider and compare more design alternatives earlier in the design process.
This white paper provides an overview of priorities related to community resilience to flooding that emerged during a 27 September 2019 meeting with local, regional and state representatives in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. The document compiles workshop details, participants and a summary of discussions and outcomes. It does not, however, attempt to provide a comprehensive listing of every topic raised by participants. In addition, this workshop was held before the advent of covid-19; the impacts of this pandemic are not addressed in this document.
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