Sustainable carbon neutral building design: New simulation tools for teaching green buildings

Abstract

The Building Industry is one of the major consumers of energy. In the United States buildings use 48% of the total energy consumed, significantly impacting national energy demand and contributing to global warming. The vast majority of architectural practice in the U.S. leads to construction of buildings with little concern to sustainability contributing to environmental degradation. However, as the environmental impact of buildings become increasingly recognized, the role of architects and the initial decision making process which determines the resource use and life-cycle of materials, systems, and construction processes, becomes more critical. In order to advance sustainable development and make green building construction the standard rather than the anomaly, the education of the architects must be reconsidered. The traditional American architectural curriculum that is based on a schism between "design" and "technology" is inherently in conflict with the principal of sustainability. Recent research in building design indicates that the most resource efficient, best performing, and environmentally sustainable buildings are designed utilizing "integrated practice," in which the various disciplines involved in building design work together at the conception of the project to improve overall building performance, reduce GHG's, and lower the costs for operation and maintenance of buildings. Although large-scale reform of architectural curricula is a complex, ongoing, and difficult debate, producing teaching tools that can simulate integrated design can impact and promote a better understanding of sustainable practice in architecture. The proposed paper will present the progress of a multi-disciplinary team of faculty who are collectively working on the completion, implementation and evaluation of a simulation software package in an interactive game format. The project teaches the concepts of "integrated design" through immersing students in a virtual world that imitates the complexity of the real world of decisionmaking and material choices in design. The project accomplishes this by harnessing the capabilities of simulation and dynamic modelling programs as well as powerful game engines while creating compelling and rewarding reasons for student's engagement in the learning process. The project is funded by the US Department of Education for the period of 2007-2011. © 2011 WIT Press.