Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Thomas Spiegelhalter
The level of man-made CO2 emissions worldwide climbed to a new negativerecord of 30 billion tons in 2010. For the building sector numerousenergy efficiency market changes and benchmarking resolutions like themandatory European Union ‘nearly Net-Zero-Energy-Building 2018-2020regulations’ for all new public and private owned buildings, or the voluntaryU.S. ‘American Institute of Architects (AIA) ‘2030 carbon neutral buildingchallenge’ are now set up with various educational resource tools to helpminimizing carbon emissions and try to reverse the negative impact. In overallthe nearly zero or very low amount of energy required must be match to avery significant extent by reducing energy demand and producing renewableenergy on-site, or from nearby sources in 2018.But is this possible? How can Net-Zero-Energy-Buildings become curricularstandard and practical routine in education and the profession, worldwide?To date, the basic curricular design process components with integratedproject delivery metrics for a robust 3D/4D-net-zero-design regulatoryframework are either incomplete or missing in most architectural schools!However, in some accredited schools, formally based curriculums havebegun to change and weave numerous energy efficiency techniques andcarbon-neutral design tool resources into their pedagogy. This research papercritically compares how these new criterions of accredited resources fordigital 3D/4D-building information modeling (BIM), and ‘Integrated ProjectDelivery” is mandating a better integration of collaborative carbon-neutraldesigns into the curriculum and practice of the profession.Despite these promising tool resources, there is still a significant differencebetween how industrial designers and aerospace, aviation, shipping, and automobileengineering students use performance based parametric computingtechnology with integrated life-cycle-cost software engines to design zerofossil-energy operated flying, swimming, diving, and driving infrastructures toarchitecture students. Since the 1980s, industrial designers have employed adifferent methodological use of 3D/4D-performative software in the aerospace,ship building, and automobile manufacturing than in traditional generativeCAD and BIM architectural design. In architectural academia, generative computationhas been primarily used for pure, aesthetic form-finding without applyingzero-carbon-energy driven global performance metrics and CO2e reductiondesign strategies to reiterate derived designs. The advantage of parametriclife-cycle design is that it links variables, dimensions, materials, and sensorsto geometry in a way that when an input or simulation value changes, the3D/4D-model automatically updates all systems and components simultaneously.These parametric 3D/4D models become manageable for designers toconduct various ‘what if’ life-cycle scenarios to design, optimize and changespecific parameters, and benchmark indicators as needed.The paper concludes that it is overdue that academia and the professionneed to embrace a greater level of performative product- and industrialdesignthinking in order to improve and to adapt to the needs of designingcarbon-neutral Net-Zero-Energy Buildings as required by law until 2018!Radical changes to the core design education and the profession must bebased on actual, annually-measured energy performance balance (kWh/m2/a) and carbon intensity (kgCO2e/m2/a) in buildings. Creative designmust continuously be reiterated and compared against systematic global‘best-building-performance’ practices- rather than only looking at modeledassumptions of national peer groups of demonstration buildings.
Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa
ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1
