ARCH 2360 - Environmental and Ecological Systems

This course focuses on the relationship between the built environment and its context through an introduction to key environmental theories and principles, climate/microclimate types, thermal comfort and thermal delight theories. The course introduces the fundamentals of building physics as it pertains to building thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, and airflow, and emphasis is placed on passive strategies of heating, cooling, and daylighting. Students will develop the ability to design architecture that, through material selection, form, orientation and climate-specific strategies, mitigates its impacts on the climate and the ecosystem. Environmental and Ecological Systems will introduce analysis and simulation tools which put the environmental principles covered in course lectures into practice. Projects will run in coordination with design projects in ARCH 2830 and will explore site-specific climate analysis, the deployment of environmental strategies at multiple scales, and the design of daylighting and shading strategies informed by digital simulations and physical models.

This course is required of all second-year architecture undergraduates in the B.Arch. program.

Prerequisites/Corequisites: Prerequisites: ARCH 2370 Corequisites: ARCH 2830

Attributes
Data Intensive 1

When Offered: Spring term annually.

Co-Listed: ARCH 5310

Credit Hours: 4

SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS

RPI CONNECTIONS

ENGAGE

ARCH 2360 - Environmental and Ecological Systems