Welcome to DIA Design with Environmental Analysis (DEA), part of the CAD/Logic didactic offer. Sustainable design is a hot topic at DIA : our students actively practice the aesthetic of sustainability in the context of studios, other courses and in their own careers.  At the same time, toolkits like LadybugTools® and ClimateStudio by Solemna® enable architects to add sustainability as a new dimension of the design, beyond 3D, and are more and more interconnected with a wide variety of modeling tools, from Sketchup to Rhino to Revit. Leading architecture firms seek environmental performance with dedicated workflows to evaluate the environmental performance of design proposals. Nevertheless it's crucial to understand that everyone can do sustainability, but this topic is highly complex. In other words: plotting an environmental study is literally two clicks away from your design resources - but using the auto-pilot may not deliver any tangible result. 

D/A Design with Environmental Analysis (DEA) introduces a design toolkit to make the computer simulate the law of physics in digital 3D models and supplement the design visualization with AI. This course proposes a structured approach to analyzing your design in the environment, from understanding the context to the building physics behind it. A series of theoretical lectures on the environment confront the students with understanding the sustainable angle of architecture, while hands-on sessions will introduce ClimateConsultant®, LadybugTools® and ClimateStudio by Solemna®. A generative artificial intelligence framework pivoting around ComfyUi®, the visual scripting interface of Stable Diffusion®, will also be presented to let the AI gain “visibility” of the model and supplement the design process by exploring the unconscious realms of text-to-image prompting. The goal is to deliver multiple design options that enhance diversity and produce data to support a multidisciplinary decision making.  Because it’s logic to move away from CAD.

Environmental analysis will be first performed on test models in class. Students are then asked to bring a case study, ideally linked to other DIA work such as your studio or an ongoing project or competition, in order to identify the topics that need to be addressed from a sustainability perspective, produce viable alternatives and improve the design performance. The course expects students to deliver added value to their individual design, whose progress will be monitored with weekly step-by-step assignments.