Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailablePresent Day and Future Cooling Enabled by Integrated Water Management(IAUC, 2023)As critical input to development of future Australian urban water policy we were engaged by the Australian Government to use TARGET1.(The Air temperature Response to Green infrastructure Evaluation Tool) to assess urban heat amelioration associated with various levels of IWM (amounts of water and green infrastructure in the urban landscape) for nine Australian cities (Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Albury-Wodonga and Townsville) for two future time frames (2030 and 2050) and for multiple emissions scenarios (SSP 1.2-6, 3.7-0 and 5.8-5). In further work (not discussed here), the results from the urban climate modelling were then to be used to develop estimates of the potential health-economic benefits of using IWM to deliver cooler climates under current and future climates.
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ItemRenovation Machizukuri in Contemporary Japan: The Cases of Suwa, Kokura and Onomichi(SAHANZ, )The increasing number of vacant properties is a pressing challenge in Japan today. Depopulated towns and neighbourhoods are experiencing socio-economic decline. In response, citizen groups have carried out diverse activities known as “machizukuri” to improve the quality of life in their communities and living environments. Since the 2000s, machizukuri practices that involve the renovation of vacant building stock came to be known as “renovation machizukuri” (renovation town-making) which emphasizes social engagement through participatory design and do-it-yourself (DIY) building methods. This paper presents examples of renovation machizukuri that have emerged in recent years and are still ongoing in three Japanese cities – Suwa, Kokura and Onomichi. These three case studies shed light on the evolving role of architects and professionals who work together with citizens and volunteers in the sharing of knowledge and resources drawn together through strong social networks both online and offline. They are part of a larger movement in the rise of renovation culture, signifying a new era in contemporary Japanese architecture and town planning.
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ItemMaking Employability Skill Assessment Explicit: Isn’t it time?(The Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, 2023)With architectural education facing a growing list of crises, one issue that has received less attention, but arguably lies at the foundation of many of these challenges, is around assessment of employability skills. Also referred to as ‘soft’ skills, ‘generic’ skills or more recently ‘power’ skills, these include critical thinking, problem solving, interpersonal skills, a capacity for logical and independent thought, communication and information management skills, intellectual curiosity and rigor, creativity, ethical awareness and practice, integrity and tolerance (Bath et al., 2004). By definition, these skills are essential for individuals to effectively engage in professional practice, as well as successfully transitioning to other career paths in the future. Furthermore, the architecture profession’s aim of confronting systemic ecological, social and racial injustice very much depends on these skillsets, not just design prowess. Adding to this argument, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) recently published an ‘Equity in Architectural Education’ guide, which articulates what they see as the ongoing challenge jointly facing architecture programs and the industry: in order to become a truly diverse profession and meet the needs of the publics we serve, we must find ways of becoming more welcoming, more inclusive, more equitable and more supportive in our teaching practices. Key to these aims is to critically reflect on how and what we assess, insofar as it signals to students the skills and knowledge valued by the profession. In short, addressing the longstanding ‘hidden curriculum’ within our discipline’s cultural practices is essential to addressing diversity, equity and inclusion. It is here where the uncodified values embedded in the way we approach employability skills, and our reluctance to assess them, rears its ugly head. Believing that employability skills can be promoted through an ‘assessment by proxy’ approach is problematic. What about employability skills, or our understanding of how best to promote them, makes their assessment feel so unappealing, unreasonable or unnecessary? It is certainly a challenge, but by refusing to engage in it, are we allowing privileged students with preexisting social capital to achieve these tacit markers of success while leaving the rest of our cohorts to struggle unnecessarily? Extending from a recent case study by the author (Thompson & Soccio, 2022), this paper proposes that, as a general rule, architecture schools do not assess employability skills—at least not in any systematic way. The paper then reviews recent developments in disciplines like engineering, accounting and nursing to glean lessons learnt in these contexts. In exploring the topic of employability skill assessment, a direct line is drawn between an issue that might appear mundane to the greatest challenges facing the architectural community.
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ItemStructural Design with Reclaimed Materials: an Elastic Gridshell out of Skis(International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS), 2017)This paper presents the design and construction of a 36m2 gridshell, the rigidity of which is achieved through the bending of an initially flat grid of 210 reclaimed skis. The generated waste for its production is near zero as it is mostly built from discarded material. Its construction process is such that it can be disassembled and reassembled multiple times without scaffolding and by means of traditional tools only. After a brief introduction on the need for reducing embodied carbon and waste in structures through reuse, the paper sets up the constraints that have driven the definition of the pavilion, the main one being the extension of the lifetime of high-performance sport equipment by reclaiming their intrinsic mechanical properties. The paper then details the encountered unusual aspects in the design process and how they have been overcome – i.e., sporadic material supply, categorization of mechanical properties, physical alteration of these properties, and uncertainties in the numerical modelling of both the structural analysis and the construction process. Eventually, we conclude that reclaimed skis as a material have the potential to be as good as conventional timber when designing elastic gridshells. A series of future directions for this emerging field of research are also laid out.
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ItemAcoustic and structural design embedded in design studio pedagogy(IASS, 2023-07-10)This paper presents a theoretical framework and pedagogical principles for performance-based design education focusing on acoustics and structural behaviour within the architectural context of the Melbourne School of Design of The University of Melbourne. Our architecture students have limited exposure to acoustics and structures, and both can be mistakenly perceived as engineering disciplines confined to specialists, taking place after a design idea is formalised. A design studio, CDE Studio 45 [1], developed and taught by the authors for the past three years within the Master of Architecture Course of the Melbourne School of Design, is showcased in this paper to illustrate how structural behaviour, acoustics and music can drive design education and engage students intellectually and creatively, shifting between analytic, synthetic, and evaluative modes of design thinking (performance-based, model-making, computational design). Physical models of shell-like structures are developed and recursively tested through critical listening exercises and analogue acoustic simulations to visualise sound propagation (Figure 1). Proposals undergo acoustic analysis and optimisation via geometric acoustics methods and Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithms (MOGA) to evaluate and improve the final design’s acoustic performance, allowing students to verify their design processes. Students’ final designs demonstrate a capacity for critical design thinking driven by landscape, acoustics, structural and material systems, and detail considerations.
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ItemEnhancing interactivity in structural optimisation through reinforcement learning: an application on shell structures(IASS, 2023-07-10)This paper describes a novel approach to structural optimisation based on learning design strategies rather than searching for optimal solutions. In the proposed approach, an AI agent is trained through Reinforcement Learning (RL) to explore a 3D modelling environment and iteratively morph a flat NURBS surface into a doubly-curved shell structure. At each iteration of the 3D modelling process, the agent computes the maximum structural displacement through FEM analysis: it learns to select modelling actions through this feedback and progressively improves the performance of the input surface. Unlike current applications of RL in structural design, where the AI agent generates design options by recombining a predefined set of design variables, our approach aims to create structural forms through the interaction of a designer and an AI agent within a 3D modelling environment. An application illustrates that our agent can interpret a preliminary structural form defined by a designer and iteratively transform such a form to improve its structural performance. The trained agent can hence transform the geometry and improve the structural performance of any open surface that features a square footprint and is defined through a sequence of modelling commands. Preliminary results suggest that this AI agent can be used for the development of more interactive tools for structural design and optimisation.
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ItemAeolus: a Grasshopper plugin for the interactive design and optimisation of acoustic shells(IASS, 2023-07-10)The design of music venues, such as concert halls and open-air concert stages, requires an integrated approach in which the acoustic response of the space being created is evaluated at every stage of the process to inform its formal development and associated performance. Various software exists to assess acoustic performance: Odeon is considered by many as the industry standard standalone software for detailed and accurate acoustic analyses, whereas Pachyderm is a plugin for Grasshopper (Rhinoceros 3D), which provides architects and engineers with more rapid feedback on preliminary design ideas because of its integration with a parametric modelling environment. Although an experienced acoustic designer could rapidly learn to use any of these programs, their usefulness during conceptual design or teaching activities is limited by the computational power and time required to get acoustic performance results. In these instances, testing time is more valuable than accuracy. This paper introduces Aeolus, an acoustic modelling plugin for Grasshopper. Unlike other similar Grasshopper plugins, Aeolus allows users to control the simulation accuracy and can therefore be used to rapidly test the performance of design ideas. Aeolus can also easily be interfaced with various Grasshopper optimisation plugins. Aeolus v0.1 was publicly released on 7 March 2023, and will be the focus of a Masterclass offered at the IASS Symposium 2023 in Melbourne, Australia.
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ItemApproaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process(IOP Publishing, 2023)Buildings and construction are among the leading contributors towards global greenhouse gas emissions, resource demands, waste, and pollution, placing a massive strain on our natural environment. Until recently, mitigation strategies have primarily concentrated on reductions in operational energy, failing to account for embodied effects; those associated with the manufacture of construction goods, construction activities, and end of life considerations. In recent years, there has been an increased recognition of the growing significance of embodied effects, and the opportunity to reduce these during the building design process. However, life cycle assessment (LCA) tools used to quantify environmental flows are often perceived as being too time-consuming or complicated to incorporate into prevalent building design workflows. The aim of this study was to review approaches for assessing embodied environmental effects during the building design process, including the LCA tools and environmental data used to achieve this. A systematic review was conducted of academic and grey literature. The study identified three main approaches for incorporating LCA into the building design process: simplified LCA, detailed LCA and incremental LCA. Further analysis of these approaches was conducted, based on case studies. General attributes and design considerations were identified, and mapped against the early design, and detailed design stages. A wide variety of LCA approaches were reviewed, responding to various challenges for incorporating LCA into the building design process, with no singular approach able to completely satisfy all requirements. Findings highlight the lack of incremental LCA approaches, and the need for further research to understand how LCA approaches can be better used to improve the embodied environmental performance of buildings during the design process.
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ItemPreliminary study on the use of Big Data for environmental benchmarks of residential buildings in Flanders(IOP Publishing, 2023)Building construction and operation both have a high environmental impact. In Flanders (Belgium), public authorities have defined clear targets for improved building energy performance, but a strategy to reduce construction (embodied) impact is still lacking. Environmental benchmarks based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) have been identified as a means to limit embodied impacts. Such benchmarks are often derived with a bottom-up approach consisting of a statistical analysis of the building stock, which is usually modelled based on a limited set of representative buildings or archetypes. In this paper, a data-driven approach is applied based on building data from the Flemish Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB) database. In a recent study, the buildings from the EPB database were clustered based on geometric and energy-related parameters, and for each cluster representative buildings were selected. This resulted in 54 buildings representative of newly built residential buildings in Flanders. The building set distinguishes itself from other existing sets because it was automatically generated from a large building database. Up until now, the EPB building set has only been used to evaluate the financial feasibility of energy performance levels in Flanders. In this preliminary study, an LCA is performed to assess the life cycle environmental impacts of five sample cases in view of benchmarking. The sample includes two detached, two semi-detached, and one terraced house, all solid construction and in line with the Flemish EPB requirements of 2014. The results show that the environmental score of the buildings is comparable to benchmark values obtained based on the analysis of Belgian archetypes. Further, the building geometry and compactness are identified as key parameters, whereas the materialisation has a more limited influence on the environmental impact. Next research steps will focus on the modelling of more cases, including different construction types, energy performance levels, and potential impact mitigation strategies. The study concludes that the EPB buildings are promising to define environmental benchmarks for the Flemish dwelling stock.