Michael Mullins

Home Smart Home: A Danish Energy-Positive Home Designed With Daylight

This paper focuses on how smart technologies integrated in a one-family home, and particularly a window, offer unique challenges and opportunities for designing buildings with the best possible environments for people and nature. Toward an interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach, we address the interaction between daylight defined in technical terms and daylight defined in aesthetic, architectural terms. Through field tests of a Danish carbon-neutral home and an analysis of five key design parameters, we explore the contradictions and potentials in smart buildings, using the smart window as an example of how quality of life and technical advances are synthesized and when they contradict. We focus on the need to define quantitative and qualitative values and synthesize these in a multidimensional design approach, toward allowing the house to adapt to a changing climate, satisfy the human needs of the occupants, together with meeting calculated energy requirements. Thus, integrating windows as key design elements in energy-positive buildings addresses aesthetic as well as technical potentials. This integration of factors from different fields can both support and counterbalance one another in the design process. We maintain that a hybrid approach to the energy design is central. The study illuminates an approach of the design of smart houses as living organisms by connecting technology with the needs of the occupants with the power and beauty of daylight.

E-Learning in Architecture: Professional and Lifelong Learning Prospects

E-learning in architectural and spatially related fields can be examined from two different perspectives, each having quite specific and complex implications. By discussing e-learning in architecture we inspect the scope of e-learning tools and practices within the architectural domain, the visual nature of education and professional training of architects, and the state of the art of e-learning implementations, together with their practicality and limitations. While these are the first areas that come to mind when considering e-learning in relation to architecture, there is another also very relevant and sometimes overlooked aspect: that of e-learning about architecture. In the latter, we introduce not only the professional but also the broader, non-expert public into the process of acting within, and shaping of, their spatial environments. This aspect raises burning questions regarding the communication abilities of the actors involved, holding their attention, ingraining sustainable principles and getting the messages across the invisible, but perennial expert / non-expert divide. E-learning in and about architecture not only offers opportunities for both sides to learn but also to get to know each other better. The chapter first introduces and highlights the common aspects of e-learning within the architectural domain, followed by e-learning for experts, through what we have named e-learning in architecture, describing specifics and presenting an example of one of the e-learning initiatives. It is followed by a subchapter describing aspects of e-learning about architecture and sustainable principles of space interventions for broader audience of nonexperts involved in the lifelong learning processes (LLP). Similarly, the subchapter concludes with an example of an e-learning tool in action and the reflections on the research presented. The chapter concludes with discussions of ‘lessons learned’ and ranking of new opportunities in professional and lifelong e-learning prospects in architecture and its related fields.

The Identity of Place in Virtual Design Studios

Abstract Since independence in 1991, Slovenian society has sought models for education in the West. As in Slovenia, schools of architecture situated in other countries of rapid social transformation are offered the opportunity to critically review examples of the virtual design studio (VDS). This article investigates such examples within the concepts of “identity” and “place.” These concepts are developed to include a consideration of the identity of virtual places and virtual studios and to examine the implications of globalization on architectural education. In conclusion, we develop an exploratory model for VDS as an instrument that integrates computer technology, distance learning, and design education.

On the Integration of Digital Design and Analysis Tools

The digital design tools used by architects and engineers today are very useful with respect to their specific fields of aesthetical or technical evaluation. It is not yet possible to fully use the potential of the computer in the design process, as there is no well functioning interplay between the two types of tools. This paper therefore looks at integration of the two types in a prototype for a tool which allows aesthetics evaluation, and at the same time gives the architect instant technical feedback on ideas already in the initial sketching phase. The aim of the research is to look into integrated digital design and analysis tools in order to find out if it is suited for use by architects and designers or only by specialists and technicians – and if not, then to look at what can be done to make them more available to architects and designers. The paper contains a case study of three possible approaches for working with digital tectonics by means of acoustics: The architects, the architect-engineer or hybrid practitioner and finally a prototype for a possible digital tectonic tool. For the third approach in the case study, a prototype digital tectonic tool is tested on the design proposal for the auditorium in the planned Utzon Centre in Aalborg, Denmark.

Representational Thickness: A Quantitative Comparison between Physical, Cave and Panorama Environments

This study compares aspects of spatial perception in a physical environment and its virtual representations in a CAVE and Panorama. To measure accuracy of spatial perception, users were asked to look at identical objects in the three environments and then locate them and identify their shape on scaled drawings. Results were then statistically compared for differences. In a discussion of the results, the paper addresses three hypothetical assertions – that depth perception in physical reality and its virtual representations in CAVE and Panorama are quantifiably different; that differences are attributable to prior contextual experience of the viewer; and that design professionals and laypeople have different perceptions of what they see in VR. In conclusion, the concept of ‘representational thickness’ is suggested by the results.

The Significance of Certain Elements in Art for Patients’ Experience and Use

Focusing on the interactional aspects of art in health interventions, we qualify guidelines for art in hospitals. Patients in this user-oriented study primarily ranked items to favor figurative art painted in light colors; however both figurative and abstract art in light and dark colors figured among the highest ratings. The role of spatial context, motif, color and shapes seems to have an effect on patients’ experience of a hospital stay. This article draws attention to the application of visual art as a source of stimulus and healing—and a means to affect patient satisfaction in hospitals.

Designing a Lighting Installation Through Virtual Reality Technology - The Brighter Brunnshög Case Study

This paper investigates how VR technology can support the process of designing light installations. Specifically, how visual immersion through digital means can create spatial awareness of an area, without the need of physical presence, thus facilitating the fluency of the design process. The motivation for this study lies in exploring new methods and techniques which can support the process of designing with light. This study attempts to set up an initial design methodology built upon a traditional approach, and expanded based on its three aspects; real-time rendering, flexibility and spatial experience. The project brighter Brunnshog is used as a case study illustrating how a method such as this can be integrated.

How do patients actually experience and use art in hospitals?: The significance of interaction. A user-oriented experimental case study.

ABSTRACT This article aims to understand patient wellbeing and satisfaction and to qualify the current guidelines for the application of art in hospitals. Employing anthropological methods, we focus on the interactional aspects of art in health interventions. A user-oriented study ranked 20 paintings, followed by an experiment using paintings in the dayroom of five medical wards. Fieldwork was done over a two-week period. During the first week, dayrooms were configured without the presence of art and in the second week were configured with the artworks. Semi-structured interviews, observation, participant observation and informal conversation were carried out and were informed by thermal cameras, which monitored the usage, patient occupation and flow in two of the dayrooms. The study shows that art contributes to creating an environment and atmosphere where patients can feel safe, socialize, maintain a connection to the world outside the hospital and support their identity. We conclude that the presence of visual art in hospitals contributes to health outcomes by improving patient satisfaction as an extended form of health care. The article draws attention to further research perspectives and methods associated with the development of art in hospitals.

Design of parametric software tools: optimizing future health care performance by integrating evidence-based knowledge in architectural design and building processes

The studies investigate the field of evidence-based design used in architectural design practice and propose a method using 2D/3D CAD applications to: 1) enhance integration of evidence-based design knowledge in architectural design phases with a focus on lighting and interior design and 2) assess fulfilment of evidence-based design criterion regarding light distribution and location in relation to patient safety in architectural health care design proposals. The study uses 2D/3D CAD modelling software Rhinoceros 3D with plug-in Grasshopper to create parametric tool prototypes to exemplify the operations and functions of the design method. To evaluate the prototype potentials, surveys with architectural and healthcare design companies are conducted. Evaluation is done by the administration of questionnaires being part of the development of the tools. The results show that architects, designers and healthcare design advisors recon the tool prototypes as a meaningful and valuable approach for 1) integrating and using evidence-based information; and 2) optimizing design processes and health care facility performances. Further study focuses on parametric information relations in Building Information Modelling projects.