Updating Elements
Asynchronous - Online Only
Solar-Shade Project: A Case Study of the Designing and Operating an Intelligent and Adaptive Solar Shades in the State of North Carolina View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Reza Foroughi
Windows are among the most important building systems as they provide lights and outside views for occupants, and they are considered to be the key element that needs to be correctly designed to save energy. As windows are made of transparent surfaces and are exposed to different climatic conditions, most of the heat gain and loss of a building occurs through this part of the building. Windows are responsible for 28% of cooling and 35% of heating loads in commercial buildings which is equal to almost 6% of total primary energy use in the United States. Using a window shading system is one of the most effective design strategies to control daylighting and energy load. The biggest challenge in designing a window shading is striking a balance between heating and cooling loads and lighting energy consumption since decreased cooling loads may result in increased heating loads and vice versa. To achieve this goal, an intelligent and adaptable solar shade is designed and constructed to investigate the trade-off between heating and cooling loads and lighting energy use, and to minimize the energy consumption of the buildings. To design the proposed adaptable window shades, an optimization model is developed using the Hill-Climbing (HC) algorithm coupled with EnergyPlus software. The DesignBuilder software (a graphical interface of EnergyPlus) is also used to design the model’s geometry. The developed model is capable of identifying the optimum configurations of adaptable solar shades and consequently minimizing the building energy consumption.
Moved by Buildings: Architecture and the Illusion of Detachment View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laura Tanner, James Krasner
This paper addresses the concerns that theoretical discussions of enchantment and atmospheric perception raise about the way humans enter into relationships with architectural space, art objects, and design. Focusing on Columbus, a contemporary independent film set against the backdrop of modernist architecture in Columbus, Indiana, our paper highlights the limitations of an ocularcentric approach to art and the rational language that often accompanies it. For a contemporary subject acculturated to the dynamics of detachment governing modern epistemologies of knowledge, being moved by a beautiful object or building frequently emerges as transgressive, something that must be either redefined or denied. Kogonada’s film, Columbus (2017), critiques the ocularcentric apprehension of architecture and the illusion of detachment it offers; recreating an aesthetic mode that is at once visual and atmospheric, the film works to locate both characters and viewers in the textured spaces they would stand apart from to critique and observe. Bringing together theories of space, materiality and desire, we thus consider what it means to resist or “inhabit the life” of a room, a beautiful object, or a building. The objects and spaces designed by human subjects often assume an uncomfortable agency as they pull us close or push us away, mediating our intimate experiences of ourselves and our worlds. This paper explores the cultural assumptions that make it difficult, vexed, and sometimes even forbidden to acknowledge or represent the way that the objects we hold and the spaces we move through also move us.
Exploring Stakeholder’s Engagement in Heritage-led Community Development in Historic Towns: The Case of Badagry, Lagos State View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ifeloju Olusanya
Sustainable heritage conservation and management occurs when there is effective stakeholder involvement and collaboration in the heritage development process. In the Nigerian context, this understanding is wanting as there appears to be a lack of collaboration and coordination between heritage stakeholders. This study identifies hindrances to effective stakeholder engagement and collaboration by identifying lapses in the heritage management process in the Badagry area of Lagos State. Badagry town has the potential for growth and prosperity through heritage-led development if its heritage resources are well managed. Data collection was performed using interviews, document reviews, and focus groups to explore the structures that exist for stakeholders' involvement, and how this affects heritage management and development processes. The study's relevance lies in its addition to the knowledge base on stakeholders’ studies in heritage endeavors regarding the development of historic towns by presenting case-specific evidence from the study. The findings of the study connote that heritage conservation is premised on the values attached by the different stakeholders and who is in charge in terms of ownership and financial capability of ensuring the conservation intervention. The study reveals three central areas for intervention to promote effective stakeholders’ collaboration: encouraging private sector participation in the heritage sector, building the capacity of local government staff and the local community, and developing and harmonizing activities and programs between agencies.
High Altitude Architecture - the Detachment from Nature View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Maria Machedon
Reconciliation is possible through finding the reason of the rupture. The relationship between humans and nature, between the constructed and the natural environment, evolved into a complex system, resulting into a loss of significance on the side of nature. High altitude architecture is an isolated phenomenon that can be used as a case study for the research on the human detachment from nature. Its rather short history concentrates and summarizes, on a brief period of time, the evolution of the built space in natural environments. From an initial primitive approach, that produced architecture and behaviors in a very strong and exclusive connection to nature, high altitude architecture evolved in parallel with the cultural movements and mutated into a hi-tech commercial product. At this contemporary stage, the relation between humans and nature has been fundamentally changed, in the sense of a complete detachment from nature. Architectural objects gained autarchy. The reality of external environments that include discomfort and hazard disappeared as a possible occurrence in human life. Analogically, this estrangement can be identified in contemporary built environments that completely isolate humans from the reality of nature and disable the possibility of any real direct interaction. Once the connection lost, the behavior towards nature mutates. The question is if these mutations are reversible and if, at least partially, the connections between humans and nature could be re-established.
