CAREER: Immersive Architectural Daylighting Design Experience

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In this project the PI, building on her expertise in computer graphics, computational geometry, daylighting, and architectural design, will use computer graphics and daylight modeling to advance the science of architectural daylighting design, to promote the science and understanding of creativity in design, and to create innovative tools that allow designers to explore alternative designs and new technologies for improving the sustainability of their buildings. In particular, the PI will extend her prior results on efficient, interactive algorithms for qualitatively and quantitatively accurate interactive lighting simulation, to develop a "plug in" for global illumination and visualization that can be seamlessly incorporated into the early stages of design and that will work directly with meshes produced by commonly-used modeling programs. The new tool will be intended for use on a standard desktop computer by an experienced designer, who need not be an expert in daylighting technology or advanced graphical simulations. The PI will also develop, as a companion system, a full-scale, immersive environment in which multiple architectural designers, a designer and a client, or a teacher and student(s) can gather to experience animated visualizations of the natural illumination within a proposed design by controlling the time of day, the season, and the climate. Participants will also be able to interactively redesign the space, by changing the geometry and materials. This system will be developed and exhibited on the PI's campus in the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), leveraging the computational resources at the new Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI), two state-of-the-art facilities that are unique to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.Broader Impacts: The tools to be developed in this project will incorporate fundamentally new interactive global illumination algorithms to solve for the challenging dynamic illumination conditions presented by daily and seasonal variations of the sun and sky. Techniques from the realm of parallel and distributed computing will be applied and extended, in order to facilitate online simulation and optimization during iterative architectural design. The architectural design process will thus become more effective and creative, enabling better exploitation of daylighting with a consequential reduction in the need for supplemental electric lighting, thereby leading to more energy-efficient building designs. The same framework will be applicable to other design problems that require complex physical simulation and visualization, including for example passive solar heating and cooling, acoustics, aerodynamic building envelopes, structural analysis, and general (non-architectural) design scenarios.