Workshops
The conference week will start with a 2-day workshop block, where selected workshops of varying length and for varying audiences will touch upon the topics central to the conference. The results will be presented on Wednesday June 16, following the official opening of the conference.
Therefore, these workshops represent the ideal introduction to the scholarly discussions to come. The conference committee is looking forward to your active participation and kindly asks for your registration as workshop places are limited.
Workshops can be booked through the online registration process
More information on the respective workshop topics, organisers, and the number of participants is provided below.
1 | City Energy Analyst (CEA) Toolbox
The City Energy Analyst (CEA) is a novel computational framework for the analysis of building energy systems at neighbourhood and district scales developed at ETH Zurich. The framework which is based on ArcGis serves to define energy efficiency strategies that minimize the energy intensity, carbon footprint and annualized costs of energy services in an urban area.
Interested participants are invited to take part in the first CEA Toolbox workshop, a 2-day session including theoretical input and group work. Preferable participants background would be architects, urban designers, mechanical or civil engineers involved in the field, however, all kinds of backgrounds are welcome to apply. Basic knowledge in ArcGIS and urban energy systems is preferred but not mandatory.
Number of participants: 9 – 12 Duration: 2 days
Organisers: Dr. Amr Elesawy, Anja Willmann (ETH Zurich, Chair of Architecture and Building Systems) and Dr. Jimeno Fonseca (Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH Centre)
Download the workshop description Downloadhere (PDF, 8.1 MB)
NOTE: Please contact the organisers prior to registration and check required qualifications. /
2 | Urban SOLar Visual Explorer (UrbanSOLve)
NOTE: This workshop has been canceled !
At the early-design phase of neighbourhood projects, design decisions are being made, which affect the heat losses and solar gains and thus influence the future energy performance of the design. Despite recent development in the field of decision-support instruments, limitations remain, particularly regarding seamless integration into the design process, computational cost of urban-scale simulations, and user-guidance features.
The workshop thus proposes a multi-criteria decision-support workflow that estimates the passive, active, and daylight performance of neighbourhood variants automatically generated from a set of urban design parameters provided by the user. This tool is developed to provide practitioners with early-stage design alternatives in an interactive and iterative sequence, guiding them towards a design with improved solar and energy potential. The core of the workflow is coded and packaged as a Grasshopper plug-in for Rhino, with a customized interface for gathering the user-inputs. The targeted audience are architects and/or urban designers with some level of practical experience, particularly in the early-design phase of neighbourhood projects. No prior knowledge of the tools (Rhino, Grasshopper, etc.) is required.
Number of participants: max. 25 Duration: 3 – 3.5 hours
Organiser: Emilie Nault (Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Performance-Integrated Design (LIPID), EPFL, Switzerland)
Download the workshop description Downloadhere (PDF, 456 KB)
3 | Management Game of a Building Material Supply Chain
Building material supply chains form part of the complexity of built environments. They involve multiple actors and a constant flow of material and information between them. This system dynamics management game involves a supply chain with four companies and the respective material and information flows. Participants take the role of a company and decide – based on their current inventory situation and customer orders – how much to order from their suppliers. All companies have a common goal: Minimizing costs for capital in the supply chain by maintaining low stocks but managing to deliver all orders. The players experience the pressure that emerges from other actors and from ‘the system’. As part of the role, participants will also experience decision-making and coordination problems such as the bullwhip effect.
This exercise will particularly enhance participants’ general systems thinking capabilities. In a debriefing directly after the actual game, players will be introduced to important concepts of systems thinking and causal loop diagrams. There is no specific prior knowledge required for participating in this workshop.
Number of participants: 4 – 16 Duration: 3 hours
Organiser: Nici Zimmermann (Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, University College London (UCL), The Bartlett)
Download the workshop description Downloadhere (PDF, 1.1 MB)
4 | Sustainable Hybrid Building
A multidisciplinary approach to mixed-use buildings in small urban districts: A hybrid building combines several programs in one fabric. It could be managed by public-private partnerships and could be accessible 24/7. The workshop will discuss the design of small to medium size hybrid buildings as one of the possible responses to the shortage of housing land, to reduce transport carbon dioxide and energy consumption in urban areas, to preserve resources and to reduce operating costs. Mixed-use, hybrid buildings foster integrated approaches to energy and resource efficiency.
Number of participants: 10 – 15 Duration: 1 day
Organisers: Paola Tosolini (Haute École du paysage, d’ingénierie et d’architecture de Genève / University of Applied Arts and Sciences of Western Switzerland), Jessen Page (University of Applied Arts and Sciences of Western Switzerland)
Download the workshop description Downloadhere (PDF, 95 KB)
5 | Bauen für die 1t-CO2-Gesellschaft
NOTE: This workshop has been canceled !
(German only) Im Rahmen von Input-Referaten werden in diesem Workshop gemeinsam mit den Teilnehmenden die Hürden und Chancen für ein zukunftsfähiges Bauen in einer 1t-CO2- und 2000-Watt-Gesellschaft aus drei Perspektiven beleuchtet werden: Welche sind die Rahmenbedingungen, welches sind die Chancen und möglichen Hindernisse und wie können diese überwunden werden.
Der Workshop richtet sich an folgende interessierte Kreise: Architekten und Planer, Investoren und Bauherren sowie Behördenvertreter von Gemeinde, Kantone und Bund.
Teilnehmerzahl: 50 – 60 Dauer: 1 Tag
Organisator: Daniel Kellenberger (Intep - Integrale Planung GmbH, Zürich)
Die Workshopbeschreibung Downloadhier (PDF, 820 KB) herunterladen.
6 | Sustainable Building Operation
What means “sustainable operation”? Several guidelines, norms, certification schemes etc. are available for sustainable construction, but few are dealing with sustainable operation. And those who address that have different structures (e.g. product or process orientated), approaches (e.g. performance or qualitative orientated) and viewpoints (planner, investor etc.) on sustainable operation. This leads to the following sub questions, which shall be discussed by an exchange among experts and will lead to a common, further understanding of this topic:
- Which approach is useful for a description and assessment of sustainable building operation?
- What are the linking points of contact between sustainable planning and construction and sustainable operation?
- How should the different roles and responsibilities be distributed?
The workshop will follow the World Café format – short impulse presentation by organisers, 3-4 tables for discussion (stakeholder views) with 1 moderator per table. For each sub question, the results obtained in the groups are summarized in a document, including a photo protocol which will be presented at the conference.
Number of participants: 10 – 40 Duration: 2 hours
Organiser: Carsten Druhmann, Stefan Jäschke (ZHAW – Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Facility Management)
Download the workshop description Downloadhere (PDF, 251 KB)