An Envelope - for an extension at Proteus Eretes: circular, carbon sequestering approach towards zero embodied carbon

Building sector is responsible for 39% of global carbon emissions, which makes it a main actor for climate change due to its high greenhouse gas emissions. Further, it is estimated that this 39% is total of 11% Embodied Carbon emissions (mainly the carbon emissions during construction processes and material production processes) and 28%...

Life cycle assessments on battery electric vehicles and electrolytic hydrogen: The need for calculation rules and better databases on electricity

LCAs of electric cars and electrolytic hydrogen production are governed by the consumption of electricity. Therefore, LCA benchmarking is prone to choices on electricity data. There are four issues: (1) leading Life Cycle Impact (LCI) databases suffer from inconvenient uncertainties and inaccuracies, (2) electricity mix in countries is...

The road to sustainable load bearing glass designs: possibilities and limitations of current glass design with focus on the connections

Despite the increased popularity of the application of load bearing glass in the built environment, its design does rarely address sustainable or circular aspects. This Master’s Thesis analyses what the influence of connections is on the sustainable performance of structural glass and informs about the limitations and possibilities of sustainable...

Make space, make place, make sense

a problem due to a lack of space, a group of 50 design students had to move to another building. Having a dedicated space in an historical building turned the initial setback into an opportunity. Design students usually do not have the luxury of having their own design studio. By observing and interviewing the students over a period of 5 months,...

Forming a method mindset: The role of knowledge and preference in facilitating heuristic method usage in design

Both systematic and heuristic methods are common practice when designing. Yet, in teaching students how to design, heuristic methods are typically only granted a secondary role. So, how do designers and students develop a mindset for using heuristic methods? In this paper, we study how prior knowledge (about heuristic methods and their usage)...

Applying experience reports in design education: Challenges and ideas

What if both design students and design tutors could have real-time insights into how students actually experience their design process rather than after-the-fact reflections? And what if these insights could be applied in ways that would contribute to more in-depth learning experiences? This paper addresses these questions in describing the...

Fablabs in design education

The third industrial revolution, triggered by Internet communication and renewable energies, can be experienced in so-called FabLabs that empower users to ‘make almost anything’. Although this does not change the need for designers to have making and prototyping skills, there is no doubt the revolution impacts the design profession in terms of...

The use of systematic and heuristic methods in the basic design cycle: A comparative survey of students' method usage

In the present paper, we study the reported use of systematic and heuristic methods for 304 students enrolled in a master-level course on design theory and methodology. What to teach design and engineering students about methods is an important topic for discussion. One reason for this is that the experiences of design educators when using...

Socio-cultural dimensions to sharpen designer's cultural eyeglasses

This paper answers the question, how the dimensions that have been developed by anthropologists to typify cultures, can support designers in user-centred design processes. An analysis and evaluation of the use of cultural dimensions in design projects was performed. Although many of the dimensions found in the literature appear relevant for...

Regional Health Information Exchange (RHIE)

Health Information Exchange (HIE) is a term used to describe the sharing of health information electronically among two or more entities. These entities are mostly organizations, which provide health services to their clients (the patients) and also enable the sharing of electronic health information. The exchange of medical data takes place...

Sustainability aspects of plastic pipe systems; the environmental pillar of the polyvinylchloride (PVC-U) solid wall sewer pipe system

The paper describes the importance that the European Plastic Pipes and Fittings Association (TEPPFA) attaches to sustainability aspects that are related to their business and products and focuses on a recently performed life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental product declaration (EPD) project. First the incentives of TEPPFA to apply the...