Cooling Buildings Thoughtfully

• Clarity in building science fundamentals
• Use technical terms with confidence
• Understand the parameters that reduce cooling demand
• Teach students the fundamentals to design passive buildings
• Use creative teaching techniques to explain fundamentals of passive building design
• Showcase different options to apply theory in building design process
• Utilize tools such as psychrometric charts to explain building heat transfer fundamentals

Designing buildings that reduce the need for active cooling is a key concept of energy efficiency. Clarity of the fundamentals of passive design and how to apply the theoretical principles in design resulting in creative solutions to thoughtfully cool the buildings is crucial knowledge. We believe that all architects should know how to design such buildings and all faculty teaching architecture should know how to teach students to design such buildings.

The 'Cooling Buildings Thoughtfully' course is designed for faculty of architecture to provide the tools and techniques for equipping future architects with the knowledge and competence to design buildings that reduce the demand for cooling. The focus of the course is to show various creative methods of practical application of technical concepts in architecture design.

The course contains 16 hours of content with over 20 lectures and 4 videos. While the course is self paced, we recommend that you go through each lecture sequentially. At the end of each lecture there is short quiz which will help you assess your understanding of the topic. Handouts have been provided on the 'lecture description' that can be downloaded to do the hands-on exercises. If you do not have a reliable internet connection, you could also download the presentations, video and additional resources to read it offline.

Is this the right course for you ?

• If you have been trying to integrate theory and design - this is the right course for you !
• If you want to see students come up with creative solutions using passive design principles - this course will help you get there !
• If you have been looking for ideas to teach this seemingly complex and technical topic to students in an interesting and interactive way, you need to get started with this course right away !

By taking this course, you will be able to successfully demystify the concepts to students so they understand the design manifestation of the theory. This entire course can be used as a teaching tool. By completing this course, you have completed the first step in this process of successfully teaching building science fundamentals. The face to face training program that will follow this module will be next step in experimenting with application of theory using creative teaching techniques and tools.