Designed for Performance: Informed Models and Experimental Methods in Architectural Education

Increasing performance with respect to energy and sustainability is an ever-increasing demand on buildings and the design profession, yet architectural education and practice often operates without an explicit approach to or set of methods dealing with performance. Research presented stems from an ongoing, nationally-recognized research studio at Kansas State University that engages performance problems in the building envelope, working collaboratively with design firms, manufacturers, engineers, and scientists. The fabrication and live testing of prototypes – a method transplanted from engineering and manufacturing research and development – has served as a core activity in the studio. As a variation of the popular ‘design-build’ exercise, prototyping serves as an immersive encounter with the complex and multivalent performance problems underpinning high performance architecture. While advanced computer simulation and analysis has supported the physics implications in the work, prototyping integrates performance within larger environmental imperatives including construction, building program, users, and context. The paper thus will argue for a more explicit approach to prototyping and experimental design in education, involving the use of informed models in the experimental process. Dialogue with the studio’s practioner-collaborators and industry partners further supports the importance of experimental processes to practice. In an architectural future where high performance architecture and high stakes building commissioning will become the norm rather than the exception, methods for prototyping and performance-based inquiry will be critical in preparing the next leaders of practice.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7