This web site is for architecture students and instructors interested in learning how to design buildings that combine high occupant comfort with low carbon emissions from operational energy use.

Global temperature rise now hovers at 1.5oC and has already led to politically destabilizing droughts, heartbreaking human migration due to sea-level rise and irreversible devastation of biodiversity. If we want to avert even greater tragedy, we need to increase the annual building retrofit rate from 1% to 5% and ensure that the majority of new construction projects aims for carbon neutrality in terms of operational and embodied energy use.

To prepapre their students for the task, many schools of architecture have recently added building performance simulation tools for energy, daylighting and climate analytics to their curricula. An example is MIT’s 4.401/4.464 Environmental Technologies in Buildings class. The full-semester class introduces the fundamentals of sustainable building design along with a variety of design and concept exercises. Our experience from teaching the class is that many simulation novices initially struggle applying the class content into their studio projects. To alleviate this disconnect, this site features a selection of past MIT 4.401/4.464 case studies.

Enjoy the content and happy simulations!

Your 4.401/4.464 teaching team