Conference Agenda

ABSTRACT: Carlo Scarpa is skillful in using components and materials to create, moderate and enhance the light required for exhibiting the sculptures. The aim of this research is to explore his daylighting strategies and try to understand the interplay of light and space in the sculpture gallery of the Castelvecchio. This study started with background research, on-site studies then followed by parametric analysis. Overall, the findings suggest that Scarpa has wisely used key light and side light in the problematic space, creating a fascinating lighting environment.

KEYWORDS: daylighting, exhibition design, modelling, spatial creation

It is widely acknowledged that buildings contribute a considerable proportion of global GHG emissions in both their construction and use, making them a key contributor to global climate change. This reality is still absent in architectural education in much of sub-Saharan Africa, where a business-as-usual approach still predominates. Contemplating the responsibility of architects, landscape architects, urban designers and urban planners have in curbing GHG emissions, this paper reflects on how architectural education could respond to the challenges posed, placing architecture students and educators front-and-centre in this challenge, through their actions and outputs. The paper presents on-going dialogue surrounding the need to address climate change as an integral part of architectural discourse, looking at the attendant opportunities and challenges that arise from this process, and what we can learn from this discourse.

This paper presents preliminary research outcomes from applying EEG Mind Wave Mapping methodology for investigating the impacts of learning environment on students' concentration and learning performance under different lighting conditions. During the learning process, whether students remain attentive generally influences their learning efficacy. Literature shows that classroom lighting may be important for pupils' academic performance. However, most of the time, lighting could not be adequately controlled due to the given building envelope design and the spatial layout. The present study explores the influence of different lighting conditions in a conditioned room on architectural students' mind wave when they were engaging in a learning task. Lighting scenarios included naturally lit, artificially lit and hybrid mode set in this room were experimented and the test scores of the learning tasks under these scenarios were compared against mind wave mapping results . The preliminary findings from this study showed that students’ performance in a natural daylit and hybrid lit room shows higher concentration than that in the artificially lit room, as a result, the use of natural light in the learning environment is more desirable and this can have significant benefit for reducing energy demands from artificial lighting in educational spaces.

Urban climatology (UC) is fundamentally interdisciplinary as it draws upon the expertise of several distinct fields including: atmospheric sciences, architecture, engineering, geography and urban planning & design [1]. For a student of UC, integrating the contributions of each to an understanding of urban climate is a challenge; each has a focus on different spatial and time scales and uses different terminology to describe the relevant features/processes from their perspectives. As a result, what represents a solution in one field can create a problem for those working in another. For example, building air conditioning that is used to offset uncomfortably hot outdoor temperatures adds waste energy to the outdoors, contributing to warming and creating an energy demand feedback loop. In this paper, we describe the London Urban Climate Walk and how it is used to explore urban microclimates and teach the principles of urban climatology. The walk treats the participants as a mobile ‘weather stations’ and links their sensory faculties to climate processes. The paper will present the results of atmospheric measurements taken along the route and of interviews with participants.