Design, Climate, and Computation
Welcome to “Design, Climate, and Computation,” a two-day intensive workshop on designing buildings for specific environmental outcomes. Tackling the climate crisis requires armies of architects who can evaluate the trade-offs between the benefits of building versus the impacts and resources required to build. This workshop offers an introduction to the computational tools needed to study design options and measure environmental outcomes.
In this workshop, you’ll gain both theoretical knowledge and practical skills for applying environmental tools during the early design phases. Hands-on sessions with Grasshopper and Ladybug tools will demonstrate making design decisions at multiple scales, and on comparing the visual and performative qualities of various design iterations. Technical tutorials will focus on relatively simple simulations (solar geometry and direct sunlight hours) so that we have time to focus on the theory, argumentation, and design process.
This workshop is aimed at architects who burn to become climate warriors, but who may be new to computational tools like Grasshopper and have yet to integrate these techniques into their creative process. This is not simply a technical tutorial, we will also focus on thinking critically, questioning simulation results, and on arguing persuasively through drawings and data visualizations.
Course highlights
- Learn specific tactics for incorporating environmental considerations into the creative design process, leveraging software and data-driven approaches to measure outcomes.
- Participate in hands-on technical sessions for using Grasshopper & Ladybug tools, examining design decisions at multiple scales, comparing performance, and making informed choices.
- Expand your aesthetic appreciation of architectural quality and enhance your own design process with computational techniques for representing each design option’s pros and cons.
- Improve your argumentation skills, so you can advocate for your decisions.
What you will learn
1. Computational Tools for Environmental Design: Theory and Practice
Equip yourself with theoretical background and practical skills to apply digital tools to environmental decisions in the early design phases.
2. Expand your understanding of aesthetic quality
Learn to appreciate new time-sensitive qualities of architectural design as you utilize Ladybug tools to precisely study the performance of specific design options.
3. Persuasive environmental design argumentation
Gain hands-on expertise integrating environmental considerations and arguing for sustainable outcomes in early design phases. Learn how to measure and enhance environmental performance and how to convince others of its importance.
Mentors
Alexander Jacobson
Alexander Matthias Jacobson is an architect specialized in the relationship between design and environmental impact. He directly challenges traditional divisions between technical expertise and artistic expression by developing software that weaves hard data on environmental consequences directly into the creative design process. He also places a heavy emphasis on empowering others through education on making more informed design decisions, by nurturing theoretical knowledge, storytelling, creative development, and technical skills within the teams he engages.
His current role as Life Cycle Design Lead at BIG, Bjarke Ingles Group Architects, focuses on software and process development for running Life Cycle Analysis on BIG’s projects. This focus on embodied emissions complements his previous role at BIG as a Climate and Computational Design specialist, which focused on operations and systematizing the design response to local climate on more than 100 projects in every major climate on earth.
Prior to joining BIG, he also worked at Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Ábalos-Sentkiewicz Arquitectos, each with a focus on energy performance and climate analysis. As a Research Associate at Harvard Graduate School of Design, he co-taught a design studio with the Chair of Department of Architecture Iñaki Ábalos’ on the topic of merging vernacular and modernist design strategies in thirteen global climates. He contributed to airflow and heat-transfer research at Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, and he is an open-source contributor to the Official Honeybee Wiki.
Alexander also has extensive digital fabrication experience, from wild contract work (like welding a dragon-barbeque) at NextFAB Studio in Philadelphia, to CNC milling technician, to industrial ceramic prototyping, and highly specialized biomimetic approaches to robotic carbon fiber-winding with Achim Menges.
Alexander holds a Masters in Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a B.A. in Urban Studies and Architecture with Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors from the University of Pennsylvania.
Programme
Day 1 Computational Design and Climate Data
- Course Intro, overview, learning goals
- Lecture 1: A brief introduction to Architecture in the age of climate change
- Activity: Examine weather data of your home town, identify scenarios for design.
- Lecture 2: Scientific and iterative design based on climate data.
- Understanding and interpreting environmental data
- Reading temperature data to identify heating/cooling period
- Reading wind data: Identifying wind chill periods and helpful summer breeze
- Key wind speed thresholds and metrics
- Reading radiation: Direct, Indirect, and Global Radiation
- Activity: Develop and & share your design hypothesis.
- Simulation Demonstration: Grasshopper/Ladybug Tutorial
- Level 1: Introduction to measuring area & volume
- Level 2: Introduction to the Sun Path component and solar vectors
- Level 3: Advanced Sunlight Hours Analysis:
- Coloring a surface based on sunlight hours received over a specific period
- Iterating multiple design options and analyzing the results
- Drawing Demonstration:
- Documenting and quantitatively comparing the performance of each design iteration
- Application: Examining design decisions at urban scale, building scale, and room scale using solar vectors
- Activity: Test your design hypothesis, document results, iteratively explore possibilities.
- Q&A + Tutored Work Session
Day 2 Advocating for climate-based design
- Lecture: Developing design narratives, visual composition, and argumentation
- Demonstration: Story-boarding your argumentation
- By hand
- In Rhino
- Activity: Storyboard your design argument & present
- Feedback on presentations
Important Info:
- It is advisable to have active plans for the following tools: Midjourney, Prome AI, Krea AI and Runway. This tools covered have free versions, except for Midjourney.
- Basic knowledge of interior design and architecture is recommended.