Anthony Denzer

From CAD to BIM: Educational Strategies for the Coming Paradigm Shift

The rapid movement from Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) to Building Information Modeling (BIM) by professional architects and engineers creates several challenges and opportunities for Architecture and Architectural Engineering programs. The BIM methodology offers dramatic new benefits to students that university programs have just begun to explore, but it also will likely trigger trade-off considerations for traditional skills that might be lost. Some educators worry that new BIM activities pose a threat to design thinking. This paper surveys some of the major challenges and opportunities that BIM presents in educational settings, with several suggestions for future directions for exploration. These findings are discussed in the context of several key conclusions that have been developed based on six semesters using BIM in junior- and senior-level architectural design studios in an undergraduate program in Architectural Engineering. The paper remarks on accreditation issues, and it seeks to develop potential ‘best practice’ hallmarks with the goal of stimulating future discussion.

How a Collaborative Architecture Influences Structural Engineering Education

This paper investigates how the ‘collaborative architecture’ of Building Information Modeling (BIM) facilitates team learning environments for engineering students. The National BIM Standard Project Committee defines BIM as ‘a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle’. Current research illustrates that the intervention of BIM facilitates a more efficient means of providing design services over traditional methods. Therefore, the faculty was responsive to the constituents’ future needs of having students obtain the ability to understand and function in the BIM domain by introducing BIM into the architectural design studios in the Architectural Engineering baccalaureate degree program at the University of Wyoming. The authors conducted a qualitative study in the participant observation tradition and evaluated unobtrusive artifacts such as drawings, informal interviews, surveys, participant journaling and dialogues, and raw field notes. The results indicate that BIM promotes clearly defined roles in the group-based classroom management approach of team learning. This encourages the students to pursue deeper explorations into their areas of interest, or to pursue more rigorous investigations of design alternatives. The authors provide best practices strategies for team learning and recommendations for refining the accreditation criteria.

The solar house in 1947

Current explorations of the solar house share a rich underreported history, punctuated by a fascinating but little-known episode in America in 1947. In that year, Your Solar House, a book of 49 designs by prominent architects such as Louis Kahn, Edward Durell Stone, and Pietro Belluschi, was published. Organized by the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company, the project was intended for the public as “a book of inspirations rather than of specific patterns.” What did the ‘solar house’ mean in the mid-20th century? This research concludes that the concept of a solar house possessed a distinct currency in 1945–47 among professionals and the public, but that Your Solar House architects possessed an impressionistic notion of the solar house, rather than a rigorous set of expectations. As a result, the architects submitted a wide variety of aesthetic responses with little attention to studying solar performance. The project overall failed to provide the solar house movement with any technical advances, nor a clear architectural identity. This paper also analyzes this project’s larger historical significance as an early instance when energy-related concerns became (temporarily) central to the architectural discourse, contrary to the usual portrayal of the solar house movement as a contemporary concern with its origins in the energy crisis of the 1970s, an approach which ignores pioneering experiments of the mid-20th century. This paper also discusses the 1947 exhibition within the larger historical and theoretical context of solar house experiments of the same era.

Architecturally Integrated Photovoltaic Panels: Residential Design Methods and Consumer Preferences

Since the commercialization of photovoltaic (PV) panels, Architect, Engineers, and builders have sought creative methods for aesthetically integrating PVs into buildings through either PV embedded materials or architectural composition strategies. PV integrated materials represent one approach that will hopefully yield more breakthroughs in the coming years, but is currently seen as novel and costly, particularly in the home building industry. Standard PV panels are better understood and preferred, yet they introduce aesthetic, construction, and regulatory challenges. Neighborhood covenants often prohibit solar for aesthetic reasons, however we are finding evidence that solar panels which are “architecturally integrated” into residential design can be desirable while adding value. This paper examines a number of examples of practical aesthetic solutions while presenting research findings from a survey of prospective home buyers which evaluates aesthetic preferences with solar and Zero Energy homes. In the survey conducted, four options have been shown including two solar option, one with typical solar and another with architecturally integrated solar. Initial data has shown a willingness in consumers to pay on average

Hands-On Green Building Activities for Beginning Students

6,200 to

The Limitations of LEED: A Case Study

7,300 extra for design integrated solar relative to standard rooftop solar, which indicates strong evidence of an aesthetic preference. In addition to presenting research findings, this paper explores residential solutions from multiple sources in search of a variety of PV integration solutions intended for future research and consideration.

The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design

This paper presents some hands-on Green Building exercises that have been developed and used successfully by beginning students. It discusses the value of this subject matter, and also examines the pedagogical underpinning for a hands-on approach. The intent is to make the case that architecture and engineering students need exposure to Green Building principles at an earlier level than is currently common, and that this exposure should be inductive and kinesthetic. A secondary intent is to prompt a wider discussion about which specific Green Building topics and skills are most important. We conclude with a suggestion that some consolidation and re-organization of existing resources is needed, as well as some consensus about the fundamentals that should be emphasized for beginning students.