Identification of Market Requirements of Smart Buildings Technologies for High Rise Office Buildings

This paper reports the findings on the identification of market requirements of smart buildings technologies for high rise office buildings in Saudi Arabia including: levels of importance of smart building technologies for office buildings, current practices of utilizing hi-tech smart building technologies in office buildings, required additional features of smart building technologies for office buildings, challenges for integrating smart building technologies for office buildings, major benefits of hi-tech smart buildings technologies for office buildings, and priorities of smart building technologies based on current usage. The paper also reports on key parameters of the comparison of smart office building technologies between Saudi Arabia and developed countries which are based on the survey results for the former and literature review for the latter. This comparison provides in a nutshell a conclusion of the complete survey analysis conducted in this research and at the same time provides an indication on the utilization level of smart office buildings in Saudi Arabia compared to the current practices in developed countries

Technological and behavioral aspects of perforated building envelope in the Mediterranean region

Perforated building envelope presents a global contemporary architectural trend which is connected – in some circumstances – to the traditional perforated models, such as ‘Mashrabiyya’, ‘Takhtabush’, ‘Qmariyyah’, etc. This study focuses on perforated models that have archetypical perforated elements within buildings and have technological and behavioural functions reflecting socio-cultural values, economic situation, and environmental needs of the building’s users. An analytical comparison (technologically and behaviourally) has been conducted between the selected contemporary cases of perforated buildings and the traditional models, by considering various aspects of the building’s envelope, and taking into consideration the interaction between perforated envelopes and occupants. After discussing the global trend, an ultimate goal of this paper is to discuss the appropriateness and potentials of advanced solutions of contemporary perforated envelopes in the Mediterranean region in order for an appropriate integration of technological and behavioural aspects to be obtained in the future of this trend

Italia-Svizzera : 1-0

Evolving online virtual worlds are intensely being utilised as 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLEs) by hundreds of universities worldwide. However, there is inadequate academic research depicting satisfaction of users from the environmental design factors of 3D virtual buildings used within these virtual worlds. Specifically, there is no research evidence representing satisfaction of educational facilities’ users, namely students and faculty, from the architectural design characteristics of their 3D virtual university campuses. This research focuses explicitly on capturing the contentment levels of students towards specified variations of certain architectural design elements of the 3D virtual learning spaces, where educational sessions are conducted in 3D VLEs. This hence provides preliminary guidelines on how to enhance the design of these spaces to augment e-learning experiences of students within 3D VLEs; achieved by analysing survey results representing students’ opinions towards different architectural features of the learning spaces within different university 3D virtual campuses

Collaborative Digital Architectural Design Learning within 3D Virtual Environments

This paper introduces a collaborative learning approach to digital architectural design within a 3D real-time virtual environment within which students Inhabit, Design, Construct and Evaluate (IDCE) their designs virtually and collaboratively. The paper articulates the development and implementation of the IDCE model utilized within the 3D virtual environment for achieving collaborating digital architectural design learning. The effects of metaphors on constructing architectural designs within virtual environments are addressed

Impact analysis of digital-based architecture curriculum on students learning

This paper reports the findings of assessing the impact of current digital-based architecture curriculum in architecture at KFUPM on studentsi learning primarily from studentsi perspectives. The paper addresses both generic and specific impacts of current digital-based architecture curriculum on studentsi learning. The specific impacts include: level of achieving better understanding of the architectural issues of buildings, and impacts of media qualities on understanding architecture. The paper introduces a performance improvement plan aimed at enhancing studentsi learning in the digital-based architecture curriculum and to accommodate the evolving nature of information technology applications in the building and construction industry

Architectural Exploration and Creativity using Intelligent Design Agents

Architects and designers are normally interested in situations where differences make a difference. This paper presents the results of the developed system of intelligent design agents that supports design exploration and creativity within the domain of architectural shapes. Creativity in architectural design compositions can be viewed as an emergence of new forms and shapes or relationships between forms and shapes from which new concepts can be discovered

Intelligent Agents for Concept Invention of Design Forms

Concept invention refers to the act of discovering new concepts for the first time. Concept invention may require a new interpretation that motivates new mappings of the situation prior to the discovery of a new concept. This paper is concerned with developing intelligent design agents that would be capable of inventing creative concepts of design forms, shapes and compositions while involved in the design process. A new approach of exploiting the old notion of “displacement of concepts” with regard to concept invention in designing in the form of mobile design agents is adopted and utilised in developing the structure of intelligent mobile agentbased system

Situatedness: a New Dimension for Learning Systems in Design

In this paper we adopt the approach that designing is a series of situated acts, ie designing cannot be pre-planned to completion. This is based on ideas from situated cognition theory that claims that what people perceive, how they conceive and what they do develop together and are adapted to the environment. For a system to be useful for human designers it must have the ability to associate what is learned to its environment. In order for a system to do that such a system must be able to acquire knowledge of the environment that a design constructs. Therefore, acknowledging the notion of situatedness is of importance to provide a system with such capability and add on a new dimension to existing learning systems in design. We will call such a learning system within the design domain a Situated Learning Design System (SLDS). A SLDS should be able to create its own situational categories from its perceptual experiences and modify them if encountered again to link the learned knowledge to its corresponding situation. We have chosen architectural shapes as the vehicle to demonstrate our ideas and used multiple representations to build a platform for a SLDS to learn from. In this paper the notion of situatedness and its role in both designing and learning is discussed. The overall architecture of a SLDS is introduced and how the potential outcome of such a system will support human designers while designing is discussed

e-Design in Architecture: 1st ASCAAD International Conference

Computing has become one of the most important transformations of contemporary professions including architectural education and practice. Most recently the focus within the architectural profession is shifting from the relevance of drawing in pencil to the conceptual relationship between electronic and digital architecture and the architecture of the built environment. It is important to examine the computer's cognitive implications on architecture and whether there are emerging new modes of thinking about architecture, space and form of the built environment. Information technologies and the construction industry are coming together in ways once unimaginable, and their union is changing what people do inside buildings, as well as how buildings are designed and built

A computational system for enriching discovery in architectural design

This paper presents a computational system for enriching design discovery in the external 2D representation of architectural plans. Enriching discovery is achieved through an interpretative search process that involves emergent findings. The developed computational system employs a twofold discovery process, generative phase and an interpretative or explorative phase. In the generation phase the system allows designers to depict an initial building design in the form of 2D plans as a set of lines. The system recognizes possible components of the initial design by generating different forms of bounded shapes that are both explicit and implicit using the Hamiltonian circuit approach. In the interpretation phase the discovery process using the quest mechanism is invoked by selecting a geometrical semantic identified in the recognized shapes to generate possible alternative interpretations of the complete representation of initial design. This plays an important role in enriching discovery in the architectural design of buildings and provides a set of new moves and directions for the designer to pursue