Tools for low-energy building design: an exploratory study of the design process in action

Building designers face increased pressure to design low-energy buildings. Consequently, there is a growing interest in providing computational support for low-energy design via building performance simulation. This article presents an ethnographic study that investigated the design process of five low-energy buildings in England and Wales. The study was informed by design science literature and phenomenology of technology. The investigation analysed the methods deployed by designers to embed low-energy performance during design problem-solving. The findings illustrate how experience-based methods and simulation tools were used to inform low-energy building design. The work identified some of the challenges faced by designers to incorporate simulation methodologies during a routine design process. It illustrates the status of simulation tools as boundary objects that mediate the communication and negotiation between design team members. The work advocates considering the design problem-solving patterns and preferences in the development and improvement of support methods for low-energy design

Connecting householders with their homes using low-cost technological interventions

Dampness-related problems at home can put householders’ health at risk. Householders often do not know how to use their homes to get the conditions they want. They are unable to understand the complex interplay between humidity, air temperature and ventilation, provoking unhealthy interior environments unintentionally. This paper presents an analysis of problems associated with dampness and householders’ behaviour in low-income houses in South Wales. This project aims to help people to understand better how their homes work, and encourage them to strengthen their connection to the indoor environment of their home by using low-cost feedback devices. The study uses off-the-shelf, real-time feedback technology to help householders visualize how their homes respond to their actions. Semi-structured interviews and a focus group were used to identify ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practices of home operation. Data-logging equipment was used to measure the physical variables of the indoor environment. The results describe householders’ experiences and feedback when using low-cost technological interventions to understand moisture-related problems at home. Some possible triggers for householders’ actions are suggested along with other factors that may inhibit people’s connections with their homes such as lifestyle, technological skills and knowledge

Occupant interactions with low energy architecture: exploring usability issues

Dwellings are becoming more complicated as designers seek to cut heat losses from buildings. But to achieve a high level of performance, occupants will need to operate buildings in very specific ways. Future homes may be less like machines for living in, and more like complex systems of interconnected equipment that place significant cognitive, physical and psychological demands on those who inhabit them. Adapting to low carbon technologies will require changes to existing practices, new skills, and will offer new experiences - both good and bad - that will influence or even determine their adoption by users. This paper considers how designers of low carbon buildings can increase their understanding of how occupants might interact with these buildings. The paper draws parallels with the co-evolution of technology and users in the computing industry during the 1980s and examine the changing attitudes to 'the user' and the methods developed through usability studies to offer a better interactive experience. Such methods suggest ways of studying occupant interactions with buildings and their systems, but need to be adapted to be relevant to enclosures rather than devices.The paper highlights the relevance of Gibson's concept of affordance as a tool with which to explore the terrain

A phenomenological framework for describing architectural experience

Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, first published in 1962, remains the essential introduction for students of architecture. It launches the trajectory along which the interested novice acquires the specifically architectural patterns of thought and language that enable him or her to analyse extant and formulate new designs. Such accounts of architectural experience direct our attention to those properties of the built environment that are deemed to be important to the continuation of the architectural tradition. Architectural discourse, therefore, revolves around a set of pregiven topics that privileges some properties of the built environment over others. At this rarefied level of debate, theoreticians and practitioners seldom consider general concerns about the contribution architecture, as a cultural practice, makes to society and the experiences it offers the lay public. To address these issues requires that we discard preconceived ideas about architectural value and examine our everyday interactions with buildings and account for the differing perceptions of architecture that coexist within our broader culture. The phenomenological tradition suggests ways in which we might pursue this goal. Steinbock’s reworking of three overlapping themes or dimensions in Husserlian phenomenology—static, genetic and generative—provides a useful framework within which to explore the constitution of architectural sense and meaning. Static analyses allow us to address ontological issues about the built environment and our interactions with it. In this endeavour, our understanding is considerably enriched by those who have developed central ideas in Husserl’s thought: Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the lived-body as the locus of intentionality; and phenomenologists with a particular interest in architecture, such as Bachelard, Bollnow and Casey. The genetic dimension allows us to examine individuals’ development of an architectural perspective, mainly through experience and education. Finally, generative phenomenology broadens the inquiry by directing our focus to processes of critique and renewal which are central to an evolving architectural tradition

Recent Developments in Three Dimensional Radiation Transport Using the Green's Function Technique

In the future, astronauts will be sent into space for longer durations of time compared to previous missions. The increased risk of exposure to dangerous radiation, such as Galactic Cosmic Rays and Solar Particle Events, is of great concern. Consequently, steps must be taken to ensure astronaut safety by providing adequate shielding. In order to better determine and verify shielding requirements, an accurate and efficient radiation transport code based on a fully three dimensional radiation transport model using the Green's function technique is being develope