A Symbiotic Interaction of Virtual and Physical Models in Designing Smart Building Envelope

The building needs to be designed to minimize its environmental footprint and to be sufficiently adaptive to changing indoor and outdoor environmental conditions. The smart building envelope is an interactive system which is adaptive to environmental conditions by transforming its shape and functions. This is a kind of machine, not like a traditional building component, which should be based on integrated engineering design methods in addition to the exploration of formal aesthetics. As artistic genius or technical skill alone cannot not fully support the design of such a novel product, the design needs to be systemized by introducing a product development method such as prototyping in other industries. Prototyping needs to be integrated in school environment, even if it requires fundamental reconfiguration of current computer-based design studios. This paper aims at proposing a teaching methodology for educating the prototyping-based design of smart building envelope system in digital design studio. This methodology allows novice designers to operate interactions between virtual-physical models. And sketches are used to share ideas to other collaborators such as programming, mechanical operations without technical knowledge. The interactions between virtual-physical models and sketches contribute to not only complement virtual models and physical models, but also achieve high-performance of smart building envelope practically.