Design Innovations in Sustainable Buildings Driven by Emerging Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

Since the beginning of the 21st century, our built environment has been reshaped by various emerging technologies to respond to the severe environmental and energy crises and provide healthier and more comfortable human habitats. To name a few, building-integrated solar photovoltaics changed how buildings are empowered, recycled materials changed what buildings are made of, digital fabrication and automated construction changed how buildings are built, and, most noticeable to end users, intelligent service systems and products changed how buildings interact with people. These technologies and their influence on the built environment have been extensively explored in the existing literature.

This Special Issue, however, focuses on how architectural design has been and could be changed by emerging technologies. As the starting point of the life cycle, architecture design plays a vital role not only in the functionality and aesthetics of buildings, but also in their sustainability. Only with appropriate designs can emerging technologies realize their full potential in the built environment, just like Le Corbusier’s modern architecture making full use of concrete and steel, and Frank Gehry’s fabulous geometries promoting computer-aided design. Now, in the current era with more exciting technologies and more urgent environmental and energy problems, it is again time to explore opportunities in design to facilitate sustainability, energy efficiency, and health in buildings, especially since this has been largely overlooked by scientific research.

This Special Issue aims to report current and promising innovations in sustainable architecture design theories, methods, and outcomes, distinguishable from normal practice, as an immediate result of emerging technologies, providing new perspectives and possibilities for pursuing energy efficiency, low environmental impact, zero carbon, human health, as well as beauty and pleasantness in the built environment. The scope includes but is not limited to new paradigms of sustainable architectural design, performance-based and/or AI-aided design tools and workflows, and novel architectural aesthetics and/or occupant experience brought by heuristic integrations of technologies. While design is partially a creative process, the superiority of the design innovations is expected to be clearly demonstrated by empirical investigations, such as measurements of built cases, simulations of envisaged designs, and/or subjective evaluations by occupants.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Sustainability.

Dr. Shuai Lu
Dr. Junjie Li
Dr. Chunxiao Wang
Guest Editors

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