undergraduate
technical studies
Sustainable Urban Design Randall Thomas This course provides a detailed examination of the concepts and techniques associated with the idea of the sustainable city, beginning with urban morphologies and densities, particularly in relation to energy. The design of individual buildings is studied in this context, as are the urban effects of spatial planning, energy, materials, light and water. The course includes a case study of a large urban regeneration project. Environmental Modelling & Simulation Simos Yannas This is a hands-on technical course on the use of environmental design software for the generation and assessment of climate data and the simulation of solar, thermal and lighting processes in and around real or virtual buildings. The course starts with an introduction to fundamental environmental design parameters and with manual computations that illustrate the range of values that these parameters take and the effect they can have on the environmental performance and energy balance of buildings. This is followed by study of adaptive comfort mechanisms relating to the different climatic, programmatic and operational conditions characterising unit projects. All of the above then becomes input to modelling and simulation studies using software aimed at achieving thermal and visual comfort with minimum use of non-renewable energy sources. Students should bring their laptops so that software demonstrations can be followed by workshop sessions.
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Form, Energy and Environment Mohsen Zikri The course explores territories where architecture and engineering meet. It examines the interesting links between building form, energy and the micro/ macro environment and reviews the development of building skins in relation to their critical influence on building behaviour and occupant comfort, as well as in terms of their carbon-footprint. In parallel with an investigation of passive energy design and renewable energy sources, diverse methods of exploiting natural forces are presented through the example of real projects. The application of computer modelling tools is explored in the context of stretching the design boundaries for buildings. Completed buildings that benefited from modelling by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are critically reviewed in terms of human comfort and energy use. To conclude the course, students will be asked to undertake a design assignment that will involve researching case studies of completed buildings in different climatic zones. Students will also be given the opportunity to conceive a futuristic building that extends design and social boundaries. Fifth Year Technical Design Thesis The Technical Design Thesis is a substantial individual work developed under the guidance of Michael Weinstock and supported by Javier Castañón, Martin Hagemann, Toni Kotnik, Wolf Mangelsdorf, John Noel and individual unit staff. The central interests and concerns may emerge from current or past design work, or from one of the many lecture and
technical studies seminar courses the student has attended in previous years. Assessment is by a panel of Technical Studies tutors and unit staff, and full details are set out in the Complementary Studies handbook. Open Courses In addition to the syllabus, students are invited to attend the following open courses: Physico-logical Parametrics Toni Kotnik (Autumn Term) Digital design is not about working in virtual space. It’s about informing the physical reality of buildings and materials, production process and assembly logic. Accordingly, this course engages with the question of the permeability of the threshold between the physical and the digital realms. Grasshopper, an algorithm editor for Rhinoceros, will be the major tool for our formal explorations of the threshold. Digitally controlled machines will be used in order to set physical constraints on the computational design process and build prototypes of the design. This year’s design proposal will involve the design and
Director Technical Studies Michael Weinstock mweinstock@ aaschool.ac.uk Intermediate Master Javier Castañón is in private practice as director of Castañón Associates (London) and Castañón Asociados (Madrid). Diploma Master Wolfgang Frese studied at Stuttgart and the Bartlett. As an associate at Alsop Architects he has worked on the Theatres on the Bay in Singapore and Federation Square in Melbourne, among other projects.
Technical Studies Staff Philip Cooper is technical director of Cameron Taylor Bedford, Consulting Engineers, in Cambridge. He has taught at Cambridge University and at Leeds University (as Professor of Structural Design) as well as at the AA. Martin Hagemann is an architect at Grimshaw’s, where he is a member of the computational design research and biomimicry research groups. Anderson Inge studied architecture at the AA and at the University of Texas at
undergraduate
production of a series of lamps. Addressing problems of parametric control, material behaviour, structural integrity, tessellations and component systems, spatial organisation and inaccuracy, this task raises many of the same issues that are involved in the design and production of large-scale architectural elements. Architectural Geometry Toni Kotnik (Spring Term) The historian Robin Evans pointed out that geometry is one subject, architecture another, but there is geometry in architecture. Its presence is assumed, much as the presence of mathematics is assumed in physics, or letters in words. The course will take up this intimate relationship and look for the architectural potential of geometry embedded within the design. Using geometric problems related to individual unit work we will be examine formal systems and their phenomenological behaviour through Rhinoscript and Grasshopper. Ideally integrated with your design projects, this investigation will act as a geometric input in support of the unit brief.
Austin before completing additional academic training in structural engineering (at MIT) and sculpture (at St Martins).
Manager and Project Leader at Buro Happold for projects including the Battersea Power Station, London, and the Museum of Transport, Glasgow.
Toni Kotnik is founder of Kotnik.archForm, a Zurich-based architectural office, principal researcher in OCEAN, and senior researcher at the ETH, focusing on the interplay of architectural design, geometry and structural system.
John Noel studied mathematics and physics in Clermont-Ferrand before completing a civil engineering degree at Imperial College, London and the RWTH Aachen, Germany. He is a structural engineer at Buro Happold.
Wolf Mangelsdorf studied architecture and civil engineering at Karlsruhe University. He is Group
Manja Van de Worp is a graduate of the AA’s Emergent Technologies & Design programme.
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