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UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO |
ARCH 463 & 463L
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Studio.Integration A primary goal of this class is to engender the competence and confidence for integrating environmental control systems into concurrent and subsequent design studios as well as real world projects. Although there are a myriad of tools and techniques for improving building performance, this class strives to present the most relevant and accessible tools that can be successfully integrated into subsequent designs.
Accommodating the Difficult Whole
Educationally, technology is usually approached scientifically and analytically,
rather than aesthetically or integratively. Designers must see technology as a
part of complex and often-times competing wholes. Technological issues are
presented not only from a functional standpoint, but for their potential
aesthetic, social, and formal implications. This holism and simultaneous
consideration aligns well with a systems approach to understanding, rather the
mechanistic Cartesian approach that had been the hallmark of technology
education in the 20th century.
Reducing Environmental Impacts
With more government and private clients demanding LEED certification,
the relevance of energy conservation and the accommodation of human health takes
a stronger role in building design than in any time in the past. As the most of the world has acknowledged with the Kyoto Treaty and Protocol, the
design of buildings and cities is a large contributor of many of today's
global environmental problems. Buildings use a third of the energy in the
US; consume vast quantities of finite, non-renewable resources; produce almost one-half
of the world's CO2 emissions, which encourage
global warming; and represent half of the world's CFC consumption, which
contributes to atmospheric ozone depletion. Architectural design decisions are
responsible for 1) environmental externalities, such as the off-site effects of
energy and materials production and consumption; 2) on-site effects, such as
destruction of local ecosystems, habitat, and the pollution of air, water, and
soil; 3) indoor air pollution, caused by toxic building materials, poor
construction practices, and poorly designed ventilation. Students must learn the
consequences of their future design decisions.
Process-Integrated Technology
Students learn about technological questions in terms of their design context.
Systems are presented as integrated with design process, with appropriately
detailed methods applied at each stage. For instance, rule-of-thumb methods and
graphic analyses are used for preliminary design and more detailed analytical
calculation procedures are introduced as more detail about the design emerges.
In this way, analysis can be integrated with the generative and iterative
process of architectural design. The interrelationships among different
technical systems and between technical systems and other design concerns is
stressed, particularly the aesthetic, formal, and experiential opportunities in
environmental control systems.
Formal Implications of Technology
Technology is most often thought of as a subject of practicality, considered
after the more glamorous activity of "design." Rather than learning
about technology as a means to more lofty ends, it is more important to
understand the formal implications of technological systems, and the possibility
for the convergence, overlap, and tension between technical agendas and other
architectural intentions. The course aims to enable designers to create a
building as a light fixture, a building as a heat exchanger, a building as an
energy storage system, as a catchment system, and ideally, as a biologically
responsive ecosystem. The approaching requirements for exclusive use of
renewable energy, within the life-span of buildings built today, mandate that
the architecture addresses issues of sustainability, while still offering
opportunities for beauty, delight, and affection.