The paper presents a control-oriented modeling approach for multi-zone buildings with mixed-mode (MM) cooling that incorporates their mode switching behavior. A forward state-space representation with time-varying system matrices is presented and used for establishing a detailed prediction model of a multi-zone MM building. The linear time-variant state-space (LTV-SS) model, which is considered as a true representation of the building, is used for developing data-driven linear time-invariant state-space models based on the subspace identification algorithm. The simplified black-box model can successfully capture the switching behavior of the MM building with the RMSE of 0.64 ºC
