Integrated Design Pedagogy for Energy Efficient Design: Tools for Teaching Carbon Neutral Building Design

Abstract

Among all human activities contributing to climate change, the construction and operation of buildings is among the most energy, pollution, and resource intensive. Building and construction activities consume significant amounts of raw materials each year. Materials utilized in buildings have high-embodied energy, high-embodied emissions, and high levels of toxins and pollutants at the end of their production. Given the size of the building industry and its impact on the environment, educational practices that help future professionals in building design and construction to understand how to minimize the adverse impacts of buildings on the environment is paramount. The following paper presents the outcomes from a funded project by the U.S. Department of Education that supported an interdisciplinary team of faculty to develop and produce an educational platform comprised of software and a hard copy textbook developed for advancing climate responsive and energy efficient building design. The paper will discuss and present the project, the pedagogical principals and the testing results.

Built Environment Education Across Boundaries. The Case of Energy Retrofit As a Tool for Low Carbon Transition

“…Prior studies have noted the importance of Transformative Pedagogy to deal with the sustainability in Higher Education [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. This study set out to assess a specificallydesigned cognitive tool in order to facilitate knowledge integration and transfer among built environment disciplines.…”

“…Vassigh and Spiegelhalter [6] have emphasized the importance of self-directed learning, which can also be supported by Information and Communication Technologies for developing a new set of pedagogical strategies. Wang et al [7] have focused on transdisciplinary exercises which are managed by teachers as facilitators of learning who guide learners in developing their understanding of the problems holistically and take actions at individual and collective levels.…”

Cooperative learning in design studios: a pedagogy for net-positive performance

“…As carbon emissions increase (United States Global Change Research Program 2018) and climate change continues to accelerate, professional degree programs in architecture face an increasingly urgent need to educate students in relevant content and design strategies. In attempts to meet this need, existing architectural pedagogies are often constrained by a range of traditionally grounded assumptions, for example: distinctions between studio and non-studio courses (Stevenson et al 2009); complex and crowded professional curricula with little room to supply the necessary breadth of coverage (Altomonte et al 2014); the failure of existing accreditation and qualification criteria to contribute to the systematic promotion of environmental sustainability (Altomonte 2009); and the lack of teaching tools for positioning integrated practice as a necessary component of sustainable curricula (Vassigh & Spiegelhalter 2014). Moreover, the work of the studio is often conditioned by asymmetrical power relations (Dutton 1987), a lack of diversity in both demographic and substantive forms (Groat & Ahrentzen 1996), particularly with respect to the composition of the faculty (Anthony 2002), and by the potentially problematic yet promising approaches to collaboration, community participation, and approaches to group work (Horner et al 2016;Dunster 1990).…”

Teaching Innovation and the Use of Social Networks in Architecture: Learning Building Services Design for Smart and Energy Efficient Buildings

“…To lighten their environmental impact, buildings need a new focus, with changes in models, analytical tools, new technologies and most significantly, in the mind-set of all the actors involved. This change in paradigm must be reflected in architects' and architectural engineers' training (Vassigh, 2014;Hawas et al, 2017;Salama, 2012;2015). This article describes a specific course or subject that attempts to holistically coordinate the implementation of solutions to this suite of problems.…”