CAREER: Immersive Architectural Daylighting Design Experience

在这个项目中，PI将利用她在计算机图形学、计算几何、采光和建筑设计方面的专业知识，利用计算机图形学和采光建模来推进建筑采光设计的科学，促进科学和对设计创造力的理解，并创造创新工具，使设计师能够探索替代设计和新技术，以提高建筑的可持续性。特别是，PI将扩展她之前在定性和定量准确的交互式照明模拟的高效交互式算法方面的成果，以开发全局照明和可视化的“插件”，可以无缝地整合到设计的早期阶段，并将直接与常用建模程序生成的网格一起工作。新工具将用于标准台式电脑上的经验丰富的设计师，谁不需要在采光技术或先进的图形模拟专家。PI还将开发一个配套系统，一个全面的、沉浸式的环境，在这个环境中，多个建筑设计师、设计师和客户，或者老师和学生可以聚集在一起，通过控制一天中的时间、季节和气候，来体验拟议设计中自然照明的动画可视化。参与者还可以通过改变几何形状和材料来交互式地重新设计空间。该系统将在伦斯勒理工学院的实验媒体和表演艺术中心（EMPAC）开发和展示，利用新的纳米技术创新计算中心（CCNI）的计算资源，这两个最先进的设施是伦斯勒理工学院所独有的。更广泛的影响：该项目将开发的工具将包含全新的交互式全局照明算法，以解决太阳和天空的日常和季节性变化所带来的具有挑战性的动态照明条件。并行和分布式计算领域的技术将得到应用和扩展，以促进迭代架构设计期间的在线仿真和优化。因此，建筑设计过程将变得更加有效和创造性，能够更好地利用采光，从而减少对补充电力照明的需求，从而导致更节能的建筑设计。同样的框架将适用于其他需要复杂物理模拟和可视化的设计问题，包括例如被动式太阳能加热和冷却、声学、空气动力学建筑围护结构、结构分析和一般（非建筑）设计方案。

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.