Energy simulation at the forefront of sustainability education
© 2012 EPFL
Within the framework of the European Master on Sustainable Development, Dr. Shady Attia, Research Scientist at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Performance-Integrated Design (LIPID), was invited on October 4, 2012 to speak at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium by Prof. Andre De Herde, head of the research group Architecture et climat and former Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Energineering and Urban Planning (LOCI) at UCL. To allow our own students to also benefit from an introduction to energy simulation, he conducted a DesignBuilder workshop to LIPID members and MES students on October 15, 2012, to which PhD students enrolled in the new IDEAS class on architecture and sustainability also participated.
Participants to the European Master on Sustainable Development are francophone architects representing 14 different countries. Most of the participants had professional experience and looking for methods for sustainable architecture. The course focused on the use of LEED as a design tool and its ability to adapt to different context. Dr. Attia introduced the Leadership in Energy Efficiency Design (LEED) green buildings rating system and covered LEED fundamentals and broad green building principles associated with sustainability. Participants had positive views on the quantification approach of the rating system after their course. Another positive impact of learning LEED was enhancing their understanding and interest in building performance simulation for decision support. During the DesignBuilder Workshop, participants were introduced to basic concepts of energy simulation and aimed to help them in to understand DesignBuilder’s mechanics and be able to model and run simulations. 7 participants modelled a basic building using the latest version of DesignBuilder on their own laptop computers.