A computational method to guide sustainable energy upgrading of school buildings in Greece through passive design interventions

A big part of the schools in Greece fails to align with the regulations suggested by The School Building Organization in Greece, regarding their energy performance as well as the thermal and daylight comfort they offer. This study aims to inform the retrofit process of these schools, by proposing guidelines concerning the most impactful...

Hybrid Timber Construction Technology: Investigation in a hybrid building construction technique, that could be encoded in a digital tool, by maximizing the use of local building materials such as natural timber, in seismic zone of Meghalaya, India

While the world is advancing with taller structures using engineered wood, little importance is being given to natural wood, which is abundantly available in most regions of the world. The lack of technological research using this material in its natural state has caused a drawback in its usage. Also, the dependence on engineered wood for modern...

Optimized Green Walls: Study of Vertical Green Systems’ Performance in an Urban Setting

The construction, operation and maintenance of buildings consume more than 40% of primary energy in most countries. Out of this 40%, a large portion is related to the operational phase involving heat losses through a buildings envelope. To reduce this loss, several materials have been developed to reduce the thermal transmittance through a...

3D printed fiber reinforced lignin: Exploring the options to use wood in an additive manufacturing process

Problem definition and objective - Additive manufacturing has already been developed to use various sorts of plastics, metals, composites and concrete. Until now, the most used composite in building materials, natural wood, has not been used in an additive manufacturing process. The potential of using wood in<br/>an additive manufacturing...

Computational method for football stadium renovation: A computational method for the renovation of football stadiums to facilitate designers into making decisions

A growing trend is present nowadays towards the renovation of football stadiums with the main objectives of enhancing the capacity of the venues and of mproving the user experience of the spectators. The stadium design process requires to blend multiple components together, while evaluating different performances and complying with several...

Thin Glass Sandwich: A thermal study of regular and semiregular tessellations in bi-directional sandwiches

Since the oil crises during the 1970s, there has been a growing awareness of thermal losses through windows in buildings. Nowadays, double-glazing is a common product for moderate maritime climate. In the Netherlands two permit requirements are calculations regarding nearly zero energy and environmental performance of a building. In order to...

Topologically Optimised Cast Glass Grid Shell Nodes: Exploring Topology Optimisation as a design tool for Structural Cast Glass elements with reduced annealing time

Cast glass is a promising structural material that has seen increasing use in the build environment over the last year. It offers a great freedom of shape for designers and engineers, beyond the two-dimensional float glass that is still primarily used. Despite this, cast glass in practice has only been used for solid bricks, mimicking...

Optimization Design Workflow for Large Roof Shading Systems

Recently, sustainability is becoming a more important aspect in the building sector. The use of performance-driven approaches are progressively growing interest among architects and engineers. Proper design of a large span roof shading system can positively influence the micro-climate of the space underneath, representing a significant source of...

Thin glass composites: based on a structural efficiency increasing design strategy

The research focuses on the combined use of thin glass and a 3D printed spacer pattern. The goal is to design a possible solution to use thin glass in architecture.<br/>In the first part of the thesis background research on thin glass, additive manufacturing, adhesive bonding and structural geometry is conducted. This has lead to results to...

Building on Mars: Construction of a Radiation Shielding Martian Habitat with In-Situ Materials via Suitable Construction Methodologies

Throughout the time humans have always looked up to starry skies and wondered about travelling to the stars. With the current developments in the aerospace field, travelling to neighboring planets have never been more possible. On the top of the agendas of numerous organizations today is the exploration of the Red Planet. However, there are many...

Broadband absorption using coupled quarter wavelength tubes

Acoustics have a significant impact on the usability of a space and is often overlooked during the design phase: problems are often discovered when a space is already taken into use. The indoor acoustic climate can be influenced by adding absorption material, however traditional materials do not offer precise solutions but have a more generic...

An Additive Manufacturing Solution for Free-Form Steel Curtain Walls

An exploration in the use of rapid manufacturing for the design and fabrication of free-form steel curtain wall systems. Focus on reconciliation of free-form geometry, system assembly, and digital workflow.

Optimisation of complex geometry buildings based on wind load analysis

One result of climate change is the increasing strength and frequency of wind events. This creates a problem for the also increasing number of high-rise buildings many of which are of unconventional shape. However, current methods for calculating wind response either do not account for these geometries, such as the Eurocode or are prohibitively...

Visual Analytics for Generative Design Exploration: An interactive 3D data envirionment for a computational design system facilitating the performance-driven design process of a nearly Zero-Energy sports hall

Improvement of design performances requires exploration of a larger amount of analyzed design solutions in the early design phase. Computational design systems use parametric modeling, building performance simulations and genetic algorithms to iterate through a large amount of design alternatives, converging towards optimal design solutions....

Integrated Concentrating Solar Facade, Cast glass component,embedded photovoltaic solar cells

Glass is one of the most remarkable building material in modern architecture. It has become more and more valued as a major construction material. It does not only provide continuous transparency but it can be applied as a main structural element due to its high load-bearing capacity. The structural system has already been realized in several...

The cast glass travelling pavilion

Glass is a fascinating material with very interesting properties and high durability, while cast glass in particular has a lot of unmapped potential. It is also an environmentally friendly option that can be fully recycled or even better reused if not contaminated with other substances. The current thesis is exploring a dry-connection building...

Graded Structures: The design of a grid shell that uses gradual densification to enhance the performance of the overall structure

This graduation thesis aimed to find an answer to the following question: 'How to design a grid shell for the canopy of a stadium that uses performance based densification to enhance the performance of the structure?'. De Nieuwe Kuip in Rotterdam is used as a case study to put the findings into practice. In order to answer this question a...

Sun shading of the future: A next generation workflow for applying the performative computational architecture framework to sun shading design, based on an example sun shading system for high-rise office buildings with all-glass exteriors in tropical climates optimised on visual and thermal comfort

This thesis is about improving the workflow for applying the Performative Computational Architecture (PCA) framework to sun shading design. The PCA framework is a design approach consisting of three phases; form-finding, performance evaluation and optimisation. The conventional workflow in regard to sun shading design is defined as a combination...