Architecture and Environmental Design - Year 2

Spatial Poetics and Human Comfort in the Age of Climate Change_Based on concepts of transformation and application, second year students developed skills to incorporate both intuitive and evidence-based tools into their design. Evidence-based approach equipped students with tools to implement environmental design principles on top of which they could playfully develop their design proposals. Four briefs introduced students to increasingly complex scenarios and provided them with the opportunity to learn new digital and analogue tools for understanding, simulating, and representing the urban and environmental context with analytical precision. The data underpinning these exercises constituted the foundation for the development of their design proposals. With the first brief students were asked to analyse an urban area around Piccadilly Circus and communicate both its urban character and environmental parameters, such as light/shadow, air pollution, wind, thermal [pattern of temperatures], and acoustic [noise pollution]. The outcome of brief one was a meaningful environmental design strategy that informed the design of an inhabitable interface [brief 2]. Briefs 3 and 4 examined the effects of climate change on the performance of existing buildings, in particular on Marylebone Hall, a University of Westminster student accommodation tower in Marylebone Campus, London. Students were encouraged to work towards the Net Zero Carbon building concept, developing performance-based des