B4: Group B - Schroeder

Individual Projects - Viability of Autonomous Homes

For the AE510 term project, I am working with Yasmina Shields to research current technologies in the field of sustainable buildings, specifically autonomous housing. Before going deeper into our intended term paper, I wanted to see how Philadelphia compares to the rest of the U.S. on this topic.

“When it comes to sustainable housing, the city of Philadelphia ranks fourteenth in the nation according to a recent Environmental Protection Agency report. Fortunately, that’s starting to change.” [1] In the next four years, there are already five LEED Platinum projects to be constructed in residential areas. One of the most notable projects will be the abandoned block at 17th and Carpenter Streets. Once a line of abandoned warehouses, it will soon be home to eleven town houses, six condos, and a corner commercial space all built to LEED Platinum standard. We hope to incorporate future projects like these into our final paper. Hopefully, similar projects will become commonplace and raise Philadelphia to the top of the list.

As rising Seniors, we are actively looking for ideas for our Senior Design Project which is why we chose our proposed topic. One competition that is in the field of autonomous housing is the Solar Decathlon Competition. Hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, collegiate teams design energy-efficient houses entirely powered by the sun that is affordable, attractive and easy to live in [2]. As the name suggests, the decathlon consists of 10 contests: Architecture, Market Appeal, Engineering, Communications, Affordability, Comfort Zone, Appliances, Home Life, Commuting, and Energy Balance. This relates to intelligent building as autonomous housing is creating intelligent features to make everyday living easier.

In our term paper, we will focus on features of autonomous housing as well as relative costs to implement these features into pre-existing homes. One of the greatest challenges I can foresee is not being able to find enough data. For example, we also want to focus on how autonomous homes can assist the elderly or disabled, but there is most likely little to no research on the topic. Using the article Smart homes - Current features and future perspectives [3], we are able to obtain a plethora of data on current features of autonomous housing, but not on the impact of human living.

Despite this, I believe we can construct an exciting and educational term paper.


References:
[1] http://www.keystoneedge.com/features/philadelphiasustainablehousing0620.aspx
[2] http://www.solardecathlon.gov/
[3] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378512209002606

  EDIT: Comments left on Faisal's and A.J.'s original posts.

B4 - Gary Reiff - Group A

The topic for the final project is how office buildings will change in terms of the intelligence used during the design and construction of office buildings over the next 10-15 years, as this is of great interest to me since chances are I will be working in an office building over the next 10-15 years.  Also, the paper will discuss how the revolution of intelligent buildings will change the work place and the construction industry.  Below is the breakdown of how the paper is going to be formatted and written.

The introduction of the paper will define exactly what an office building is.  Next, the recent history of office buildings will be discussed.  This will include the construction history of the office buildings, the design history of office buildings, and the functionality history of office buildings in general.  From there, intelligent features will be defined.  Lastly, the 3 state of the art office buildings that will be discussed throughout the paper will be stated.

The first office building to be discussed is the Comcast Center in Philadelphia.  Research will be done on both the construction process and the design process that went into creating the Comcast Center.  Next, the specific intelligent features originally and currently incorporated into the Comcast Center will be investigated.  Then, the paper will describe how more recent intelligent features could be incorporated into the Comcast Center, and how these more recent intelligent features could affect the workplace at the Comcast Center.  Lastly, the paper might give some insight on how the new Comcast Center is being constructed, and how its intelligent features differ from the Comcast Center built in the last 10 years.  However, this could be challenging depending on how available the information is on the Comcast Center currently under construction.

The second office building to be discussed is the One World Trade Center in New York City.  Research will be done on both the construction process and the design process that went into creating the One World Trade Center.  Next, the specific intelligent features originally and currently incorporated into the One World Trade Center will be investigated.  Then, the paper will describe how more recent intelligent features could be incorporated into the One World Trade Center, and how these more recent intelligent features could affect the workplace at the One World Trade Center.  Lastly, the paper might give some insight on how the One World Trade Center is being constructed, and how its intelligent features differ from the original World Trade Center.  However, this may be more difficult since I’m not sure how much information is available on the original World Trade Center.

The third office building to be discussed is the Cira Center in Philadelphia.  Research will be done on both the construction process and the design process that went into creating the Cira Center.  Next, the specific intelligent features originally and currently incorporated into the Cira Center will be investigated.  Lastly, the paper will describe how more recent intelligent features could be incorporated into the Cira Center, and how these more recent intelligent features could affect the workplace at the Cira Center.

Finally, the conclusion will discuss future technologies on the rise that have not been discussed already, as well as how all of the intelligent features discussed could impact the design and construction industries of office buildings.  Lastly, a prediction will be made regarding intelligent features and how they will be incorporated into office buildings over the next 10-15 years.

References
1.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cira_Centre
2.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Center_(Philadelphia)
3.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_World_Trade_Center

Comments

1.) Sam Boyce's Comment

2.) Yuanjin Li's Comment

B4 - Group B - SHIELDS

Danielle Schroeder and I plan to research the viability of autonomous homes, where we define autonomous homes as being almost or completely self-sufficient. These can be sustainable and utile features that would make a living environment almost Star Trek-esque, from lights going off as one exits a room, automatic doors, etc., to sustainable features that help the house maintain a “net-zero” status. There is no gas supply, so energy is generated internally either by geothermal, solar, or wind energy; collected rainwater is collected and used; and waste can be recycled or disposed of internally. In our investigation we will further define autonomous homes and provide an overview of current and future technologies.  We’ll then look into what technologies are currently on the market, reasons for why they are not in widespread use, and list incentives to look towards autonomous living environments for homeowners/businesses. This study will be pertinent to the objectives of AE 510 in that it will introduce us to more revolutionary areas of intelligent and green infrastructure that have not yet been expanded upon in class.  

As mentioned during class discussion, the civil engineering industry is behind in terms of transformative technology; now with the advent of autonomous vehicles (Google cars), we think that self-sustaining houses are what’s coming up next and what we will be living in in the near future. The main inspiration for this investigation were from entries we have seen at the Solar Decathlon, and we are interested in partaking in the international competition for our senior design project next year.

A couple other things we plan to include in our report (perhaps in a chart): comparing features and their costs, assessing their feasibility, what tax exemptions are available as incentives for homeowners to invest in this technology, etc. In addition to the economic and environmental benefits that autonomous living brings, we will explore how else it can be of use. In prior blog posts the class has discussed having robots assist the elderly/disabled in retirement homes; for our study we will explore how an autonomous home can allow people to live their lives with limited human assistance, as well as any other potential uses.

Sources we used for our outline:

[1] http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Self_Sufficient_Homes

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378512209002606

[3] http://www.solardecathlon.gov/

Comments:
Qallaf
Whitesell

B4 - Group E - Allison Lock

For out term project, Laura Worley and I are planning to examine the present and future of adaptive, dynamic building systems. The term adaptive building generally refers to a system which senses changes in an environment and responds accordingly to benefit the building and its inhabitants. Adaptive systems are a young and rather undeveloped as a technological field. This is primarily due to the necessity if sensors in such a system. Sensors are used to provide real time information but they were not readily affordable until a couple of years ago.

Currently intelligent systems are becoming more common installations. The most typical systems include motion activated lights, air temperature control systems such as nest, and shifting, sun oriented facades. They are being applied across a wide range of construction types from grocery stores to offices and from high tech buildings to private homes. However we believe that the field is still rather undeveloped. With the expectation that the field will continue to grow significantly in the coming years, due to high sensor and computational capabilities, we have chosen to write a research paper that analyzes discusses upcoming applications and the future of adaptive building systems. It is expected that brief analyses of the history of adaptive systems, current uses, and personal predictions may also be included.

Since there will be a heavy focus on technologies that are currently unavailable and other future extensions of the field, it is expected that restricted research and prediction formation may be the most difficult part of constructing such a paper. It was decided that dynamic buildings are a worthwhile topic to study because of the quick and growing implementation of such technologies into common societal use. We expect this trend to continue and wish to examine the how much integration will occur, how it will affect daily life, and overall environmental and societal impacts.

Adaptive, dynamic buildings relate to intelligent buildings because they simplify control processes which would otherwise be labor intensive and detrimental to energy savings. The implications of such tools across general areas would allow for interactions between buildings to increase effective energy use while eliminating unnecessary waste and byproducts.

I commented on Cristian Almendariz’s and Alex Palma’s posts.

Construction Specialities Inc. "Adaptive and Dynamic Buildings – The Future of Environmental Design & Architecture."ArchDaily. ArchDaily, 10 Aug. 2010. Web. 30 Jan. 2016.

Kim, Jieun. "Adaptive Façade Design for the Daylighting Performance in an Office Building: The Investigation of an Opening Design Strategy with Cellular Automata." International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies. Oxford Journals, 4 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2016.

B4 - "Internet of Things" in Interlligent vs. Sustainable Buildings - Sean Coffey

Project Topic Description:

How the internet of things distinguishes intelligent buildings from sustainable buildings, its uses and limitations.

I decided a project topic that dealt with the comparing how the internet of things concept is and could be applied to intelligent buildings and sustainable buildings for many reasons. Overall I am interested to find out how this evolution is progressing and what is currently happening to make buildings better by embedding technology in them. It will be cool to find out what the future may hold, but also this topic choice will help get a better understanding of what an intelligent building is and how it compares to sustainable building, something that I am already familiar with.

This topic will not necessarily be straightforward. My partner and I will need to research intelligent buildings, sustainable buildings and agree upon definitions for each. Also we will need to do a lot of research into how devices and sensors are being integrated into building to make them smarter. There are a large variety of applications of technology for both building types which will need to be generalized or selectively analyzed to find out which applications are comparable. After that we will need to perform an analysis on how they compare. What makes the implementations different? Do they perform the same task but achieve a different result? The biggest challenge here will be finding sufficient research to back up our conclusions. We should be able to get some good data from researching examples of different examples of intelligent buildings and sustainable buildings, scholarly articles that present reviewed and tests theories of building systems that have been improved by integrating sensors to enable automated building adaptation that is directed to making the building more intelligent or more sustainable.

Comments

@Dianna Vogel
http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b4-group-b-dianna-vogel.html?showComment=1454046675441#c1298989061727037337

I am interested to see more of what you end up discovering by modeling Mies Van der Rhoe’s Farnsworth House. I think that you all have made a wise decision to pick a project that lightens your workload and also developing a crucial architectural engineering skill. Our most recent guest lecturer and Mr. Mitchell  have certainly been emphasizing the benefit of learning and becoming confident with Revit. Like them I think this is a great way to prepare yourselves for Senior Design and what better way is there to learn and practice Revit than by recreating an existing building. You may be able to use the structural analysis tools built into Revit to help you with your structural design class deliverables or export the finished design to a program that can do a better structural analysis than Revit. But I am more interested in what you all will find about how the building accomplished its architectural purpose of integrating itself with nature from modeling the building. You may also find that the building was not an optimum design either due to a mistake in its construction or on purpose to make the building more connected with nature. I would bet that you would bind that so much glass in a building in the 1950’s would not be the best choice for a building built in Illinois climate. The use of a lot of glass does not lend itself to good heat retention. There may be other discoveries that you come across that help you to better understand how Mies Van der Rhoe achieved the objective behind the buidling’s design by applying architectural principles. I am interested to hear more about your reflection on recreating the building.

@ Laura Worley

http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b4-group-worley.html

Your project topic has also been an interest of mine because of how adaptive facades can make a building come to life in a small way. Just like how the lit facade of Cira Center arguably makes the building more expressive and attractive. I enjoy how the facade changes themes and makes Philly’s skyline a little more artistic.

As you mentioned there are many different types of buildings with adaptive facades and they vary widely in design and purpose. Because of this you and Allison may need to narrow down your topic by focusing on specific types of adaptive building facades. Whatever you chose to do moving forward, I am excited to hear about the building facades you feature in your project.

B3 - Group C - Sean Coffey

What are the possible future advantages of Revit/BIM?

I found that there are various ways in which BIM is likely to improve in the future. In many ways the future advantages have been implemented but they are not in standard use but are foreseen to become standard, while there are other potential interoperability and unutilized capabilities of BIM that may exist in the future depending on how technology advances, the level of adoption and the economic support for those advances to become mainstream.

The currently existing advantages that are under utilized are the development and use of as built models for the future operation, maintenance, renovation and eventual demolition of the building, full interoperability of BIM with other specialty design programs, support of the complete design of a building in single BIM programs, provide quicker analysis of building systems, support modular and lean construction through prefabrication, track construction components on the site and have a real time updating schedule based on feedback from site sensors , the viewability of all building systems at the same time in a “stitched together” model, the direct use of a BIM model to fabricate the components needed, the use of virtual or augmented reality to facilitate building construction, Integrated Project Development will become standard.

As all of these capabilities that have been developed during the construction of building and other structures or products become mainstream. These future advantages of BIM in development will endow construction savings, efficiency, optimization, learning, quality, speed, safety and accuracy benefits. These will be realized by optimizing the construction process to reduce waste, minimize errors in components and schedule, limit the number of onsite activities and crew interferences, better record data about the construction process, streamline delivery, and require less work on site to assemble modular components. These will mostly occur due to leveraging what is learned from collected data and process automation through more advanced software to design a comprehensive and well informed concept to design to construction to operation work flow and feedback strategy.

Future advantages that may be possible with BIM but questionably feasible due to economics, lack of adoption or physical limitations such as computing power are the use of 3D printing to perform custom construction, use of drones or robots for construction, the automation of building systems design,

These plausible next generation advantages of BIM could increase the ability of BIM to develop custom and unique building features, automate the design, construction and operation process, use collected data and resulting performance information to optimize future construction and design, and reduce the need for human labor to construct a building.

Drones could be used to monitor construction progress through monitoring the proper installation of components and support the development of as built models. Robots could be used to help construct the structure, removing the need for human labor and performing hazardous tasks. Both the drones robots could increase the accuracy and speed and reduce the cost with which the structure is constructed.

Automated and comprehensive analyses of an entire building throughout its lifecycle could identify potential problems in the design that will unnecessarily shorten the life of the building or are non optimum. These analyses could show the designer where to pay attention to improve a building design and present the data needed to make the decision. They would effectively remove all of the tedious task that result from designing a building and leave the complex, intuitive decision making up to the engineer. If programs eventually gain the capability to make those tough decisions then programs could automatically design entire buildings or building systems so that only a check by an experienced and capable engineer is required to determine the functionality of the design.

Lastly, the digitization of codes that automatically modify families into components that meet the standards and requirements for location the model will be built. For instance the Canadian and US International Building codes have slight differences in how far out the handrails in stairwells should extend past the end of the stairs. Canada requires 11.75 inches and the US uses 12 inches. Based on the location the model is set to be built in, only stairwell handrails designs that meet the requirements would be importable into the model or the handrail family could be programmed to modify the handrail extension length to meet the requirements. This seems entirely possible, but because of the huge variety of building codes and their differences, the process to to understand the code would have to be automatic, taking advantage of text recognition software, language understanding artificial intelligence, and .link the output to the BIM code parameter input regions. This technology is already possible but is not fully reliable and expensive to produce.

References

Volk, Rebekha, Julian Stengel, and Frank Schultman. "Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Existing Buildings — Literature Review and Future Needs." Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Existing Buildings. Automation in Construction, Mar. 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2016.

Yoders, Jeff. "5 Tech Trends Transforming BIM/VDC." Building Design + Construction. N.p., 23 Dec. 2014. Web. 27 Jan. 2016.

Comments

@Samuel Boyce

http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b3-samuel-boyce-group-a.html?showComment=1453876670088#c3445327528887797374

I think you are right about most of the future pitfalls of BIM modeling. Many of them exist today and will only get worse such as trusting that the computer program has done the correct thing and increasing complexity of the programs and creations of the programs. Somewhere there is likely to be an error that has been missed since class detections have not been reduced to zero. If were stop questioning whether or not the design has been done right then we will need to rethink how we design buildings. Many firms push the software to make profit and may not perform all the checks necessary and end up under designing building components. It gets scary when those building components that are faultily designed are crucial to making the building safe or keeping it standing. Another one of my fears is that the program operations will become so complicated that the usual engineer's check stops working. This could lead to a failure and there would not be easy way to check for an error so fewer companies would bother to put in the effort to do the check.

@Christian A in Alexis Akins Post

http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b3-group-c-alexis.html?showComment=1453877679281#c7001707379768372946

I am very excited to hear that this technology is becoming a reality due to its abilities to enhance communication. It can perform all the tasks that you mentioned and maybe more depending on how the program becomes integrated with other functionalities. Like was show during the presentation the owner, architect, or engineer could go to the site even before construction starts and have the building model augment reality so that they can get a feel for what the building will actually be like. The communication from an offsite location could be upgrade with translation abilities so that language barriers wont get in the way of real time communication and decision making. Additionally, the owner could don a VR headset and take a virtual tour of the building which allows them to inspect the building model in a way that they are more familiar with. There are so many uses. I think this will be the next big game changer that will really push forward collaboration and communication of construction project stakeholders.

B3: Group C - Mridul Chulet

Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a powerful set of design management’s tool has been highlighted by the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. BIM has significant advantages over the entire building lifecycle, particularly design but also construction and facility management. The possible future advantages of BIM (building information modeling) are as follows [1]:

1.      Integrated project delivery (IPD), a highly collaborative method that often includes design-build or design-assist contracting approaches, benefits greatly from using BIM. IPD spreads risk evenly among project team members, works out feasibility issues early in the process, and leads to high-value, cost-effective building solutions.

2.      Virtual design & construction (VDC), will be relied on in coming years for constructability analyses, cost estimating and project scheduling. BIM supports VDC very well, providing dimensionally accurate 3-D models to eliminate conflicts among the trades using the process known as clash detection and to identify significant discrepancies in modeled and even non-modeled data.

3.      Sustainability and green building: Many firms use BIM to guide the LEED certification process, and it can be integrated into energy modeling, airflow analysis, and daylighting studies. BIM also contributes directly to improved “cradle-to-cradle” project analysis as well as “lean construction” methods, which are both meant to reduce construction related waste and embodied energy. Just in time delivery and industrialized prefabrication are also enabled through dimensionally accurate, information-rich parametric building models.

Many software developers have been entering the building information market as a result, though only a few companies offer comprehensive software suites that can be considered platforms for BIM. Autodesk Revit has the largest market share, which is causing some in the industry to use the terms Revit and BIM interchangeably. It is important to note, however, that Autodesk does have significant competition, primarily from software makers Graphisoft, based in Budapest and Newton, Mass., as well as Bentley Systems, Inc. based in Exton, Pa. [2] and while Autodesk may dominate, all three platforms are notable for their relative maturity. Google Sketchup may be another future BIM player.

References:

1)      https://www.wbdg.org/pdfs/1103_dell_bdc_whitepaper.pdf

2)      https://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-042011-135239/unrestricted/MHergunsel_Thesis_BIM.pdf

Comments:

Hamad Al-Hajri,
I really enjoyed reading your post. All the statements you wrote are correct and make sense. Some of the other advantages of using Revit is that it stores an entire model in a single database with all elements interrelated. The significance of this is that when you make any changes in one location all affected elements will dynamically update. Also, Revit makes work sharing easy. This means that you can work on the same project and synchronize information to a central file located on the server while everyone is separately working on their own computers.

Yasmina Shields,
Great post. I completely agree with your opinion on problems with BIM. The other problems associated with BIM are: Training and Software Costs. The use of BIM requires significant training and as with any software program there are costs associated with the software such as purchasing, licensing and training. Also, BIM requires more effort at the beginning of a project. When BIM is used, it is insufficient for a contractor to simply submit plans for its own work and then begin construction. The contractor must first sit down with the designer and other prime contractors and create the model.

B3 - Group C - Cristian Almendariz

In the past and even today many projects suffer great economic losses and schedule delays due to errors and omissions in the project.  Most errors and omissions in construction are due to the outdated software architects use.  Although AutoCAD is really good, it is too “basic” because as Christopher G. Hill says, “Only draws lines, circles and arcs which can be copied and pasted by the user”.  AutoCAD has no design capabilities or fundamental intelligence.  Furthermore, errors and omissions were complicated by the increasing trend of architects replacing designers who had a great knowledge of construction and using AutoCAD.  They were more likely to detect errors and omissions in construction prior construction.  Therefore, now architects produce construction documents that have a lot of errors regarding door and window schedules, errors in elevations, and other. 

            If used adequately, Revit has the potential of preventing such errors and omissions in projects.  Revit is based on parametric modeling built on top of a relational database.  As Christopher G. Hill says “you basically see what you get”.  After Autodesk purchased Revit, they have expanded it into Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, and Revit MEP.  It now has the ability to be able to put all these elements together and find errors, omissions, and conflicts between components.  For these reasons, the use of Revit can prevent significant economic loses and delays in a project.

            Revit and other BIM programs have a bright future in front of them.  A major contribution to its bright future is the fact that BIM programs like Revit are starting to be required in the construction industry.  Therefore, now architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, and owners are learning how to use BIM programs.  Additionally, BIM is opening the doors for the use of Integrated Project Delivery IPD contracts.  Charles Cook defines integrated project delivery as “a collaborative group of individuals and/or companies working toward a common goal, sharing skills and assets to deliver the complete project”.  In other words, IPD is a type of contract, which forces all parties (e.g. architects, engineers, consultants, etc.) to work and collaborate under a master contract.  It stops parties from working separately and makes them a team.  Either all the “team” succeeds or fails deleting fault blaming between parties.  BIM facilitates this type of contract because it allows all construction elements and components to be put together into a single “file” so that the program detects crashes and errors between them.  Additionally, it allows us to get a real 3D representation of how the project is going to look and we are able to visualize how changes will affect the final product. 

            As explained above, Revit and other BIM programs have a bright future.  As their use becomes standard in design and construction, it is going to bring a lot of advantages to the construction industry.  The main advantage relies on the prevention significant schedule delays and economic losses by of errors and omissions.  Additionally, as this technology further evolves and gets improved, projects are going to be able to be built much faster.  Moreover, these programs have the possibility of reducing or even deleting human labor at worksites by replacing it with machines or drones.  This can bring significant economic savings and a significantly faster construction.  Construction methods, materials, and practices can be significantly improved by the use of these technologies.  This opens the door to the possibility to construct any architectural design that is now believed structurally “impossible”.  Given the fast rate that technology is evolving, this future might be closer than what we think.

References

BIM and REVIT- The Way to the Future. N.p., 17 June 2013. Web. 26 Jan. 2016. <http://constructionlawva.com/bim-and-revit-way-to-future/>.

Cook, Charles W. Successful Contract Administration: For Constructors and Design Professionals. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Alexis,

I think you made an excellent point by mentioning how BIM is now allowing project engineers quick access to existing conditions or progress on site.  I think this is a main future advantage for BIM programs because it opens the door for offsite project supervision.  Possibly, no longer will engineers, architects and other site supervision officials will be strictly required to be onsite.  They will be able to supervise a project from their home office.  Additionally, this might allow them to now be able to supervise multiple projects in the same time.   Additionally, even the owners can use this tool to visualize the construction of their project in real live.

William,

            I also believe BIM has the potential to revolutionize the construction industry but BIM’s evolution is dependent on the collaboration from other markets.  Imagine the great potential of BIM if it is merged with the Microsoft HoloLens technology, which has the ability to display a virtual reality.  All contractual parties, even owners will not be limited to see their projects in a flat screen, instead they will be able to see it in real life.  This brings design stage of a project to a whole new level.  As we know, it is different too see a project in a flat screen than when it is completed.  For this reason, many owners decide to make changes along construction.  In some instances they might require parts of the project to be redesign a rebuilt bringing economic and schedule losses.  This technology has the potential of moving these changes during the design stage and making sure the owner is satisfied with the design from the beginning.