Architecture Research Works

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A Framework for Understanding Sense of Place in an Urban Design Context
(MDPI, 2018-04-13) Hu, Ming; Chen, Roger
Creating a sense of place and community is a guiding principle in designing livable and high-quality built environments. This paper presents a framework for understanding the relationship between design and people’s perceptions about a place, within an urban design context. While a large volume of literature on sense of place (SOP) already exists, the proposed framework and its application in the design field present a unique opportunity to add new knowledge to this interdisciplinary topic. This research will investigate the empirical relationship between architecture/urban design and people’s perceptions about a place and their contributions to SOP. Urban designers and architects play important and determining roles in defining the physical qualities and the characteristics of a place. However, it has always been challenging to quantify the relationship between a physical environment and a person’s emotional experience. Three urban sites were analyzed to illustrate this framework, and four physical characteristics and four perceptual qualities were cross-investigated and analyzed. This proposed framework will help architects and urban designers to gain a better understanding of SOP and placemaking techniques, eventually helping to improve urban design quality.
Optimal Renovation Strategies for Education Buildings—A Novel BIM–BPM–BEM Framework
(MDPI, 2018-09-14) Hu, Ming
The aim of this paper is to propose a novel building information model (BIM)–building performance model (BPM)–building environmental model (BEM) framework to identify the most energy-efficient and cost-effective strategies for the renovation of existing education buildings to achieve the nearly zero-energy goal while minimizing the environmental impact. A case building, the University of Maryland’s Architecture Building, was used to demonstrate the validity of the framework and a set of building performance indicators—including energy performance, environmental impacts, and occupant satisfaction—were used to evaluate renovation strategies. Additionally, this novel framework further demonstrated the interoperability among different digital tools and platforms. Lastly, following a detailed analysis and measurements, the case study results highlighted a particular energy profile as well as the retrofit needs of education buildings. Eight different renovation packages were analyzed with the top-ranking package indicating an energy saving of 62%, carbon emissions reduction of 84%, and long-term cost savings of 53%, albeit with a relatively high initial cost. The most preferable package ranked second in all categories, with a moderate initial cost.
Literature Review of Net Zero and Resilience Research of the Urban Environment: A Citation Analysis Using Big Data
(MDPI, 2019-04-24) Hu, Ming; Pavao-Zuckerman, Mitchell
According to the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report, the urban environment is responsible for between 71% and 76% of carbon emissions from global final energy use and between 67% and 76% of global energy use. Two important and trending domains in urban environment are “resilience” and “net zero” associated with high-performance design, both of which have their origins in ecology. The ultimate goal of net zero energy has become the ultimate “high-performance” standard for buildings. Another emerging index is the measurement and improvement of the resilience of buildings. Despite the richness of research on net zero energy and resilience in the urban environment, literature that compares net zero energy and resilience is very limited. This paper provides an overview of research activities in those two research domains in the past 40 years. The purpose of this review is to (1) explore the shared ecological roots of the two domains, (2) identify the main research areas/clusters within each, (3) gain insight into the size of the different research topics, and (4) identify any research gaps. Finally, conclusions about the review focus on the major difference between the net zero movement and resilience theory in the urban environment and their respective relations to their ecological origins.
Cost-Effective Options for the Renovation of an Existing Education Building toward the Nearly Net-Zero Energy Goal—Life-Cycle Cost Analysis
(MDPI, 2019-04-25) Hu, Ming
A comprehensive case study on life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) was conducted on a two- story education building with a projected 40-year lifespan in College Park, Maryland. The aim of this paper was to (1) create a life cycle assessment model, using an education building to test the model, (2) compare the life cycle cost (LCC) of different renovation scenarios, taking into account added renewable energy resources to achieve the university’s overall carbon neutrality goal, and (3) verify the robustness of the LCC model by conducting sensitivity analysis and studying the influence of different variables. Nine renovation scenarios were constructed by combining six renovation techniques and three renewable energy resources. The LCCA results were then compared to understand the cost-effective relation between implementing energy reduction techniques and renewable energy sources. The results indicated that investing in energy-efficient retrofitting techniques was more cost-effective than investments in renewable energy sources in the long term. In the optimum scenario, renovation and renewable energy, when combined, produced close to a 90% reduction in the life cycle cost compared to the baseline. The payback period for the initial investment cost, including avoided electricity costs, varies from 1.4 to 4.1 years. This suggests that the initial investment in energy-efficient renovation is the primary factor in the LCC of an existing building.
Connections and Divergence between Public Health and Built Environment—A Scoping Review
(MDPI, 2020-03-05) Hu, Ming; Roberts, Jennifer D.
Public health and built environment design have a long-intertwined history of promoting a healthy quality of life. They emerged with the common goal of preventing infectious disease outbreaks in urban areas and improving occupants’ living conditions. In recent years, however, the two disciplines have become less engaged and with each developing a distinct focus. To respond to this disconnection, a systematic review was conducted to identify the connection and divergence between public health and built environment design and planning. This paper aims to establish a context for understanding the connections, synergies, and divergence between public health and built environment design disciplines. Further, the four main health factors in the built environment are identified and explained: physical, physiological, biological, and psychological factors. Finally, future trends to reconnect public health with build environment design are then outlined.
A Building Life-Cycle Embodied Performance Index—The Relationship between Embodied Energy, Embodied Carbon and Environmental Impact
(MDPI, 2020-04-13) Hu, Ming
Knowledge and research tying the environmental impact and embodied energy together is a largely unexplored area in the building industry. The aim of this study is to investigate the practicality of using the ratio between embodied energy and embodied carbon to measure the building’s impact. This study is based on life-cycle assessment and proposes a new measure: life-cycle embodied performance (LCEP), in order to evaluate building performance. In this project, eight buildings located in the same climate zone with similar construction types are studied to test the proposed method. For each case, the embodied energy intensities and embodied carbon coefficients are calculated, and four environmental impact categories are quantified. The following observations can be drawn from the findings: (a) the ozone depletion potential could be used as an indicator to predict the value of LCEP; (b) the use of embodied energy and embodied carbon independently from each other could lead to incomplete assessments; and (c) the exterior wall system is a common significant factor influencing embodied energy and embodied carbon. The results lead to several conclusions: firstly, the proposed LCEP ratio, between embodied energy and embodied carbon, can serve as a genuine indicator of embodied performance. Secondly, environmental impact categories are not dependent on embodied energy, nor embodied carbon. Rather, they are proportional to LCEP. Lastly, among the different building materials studied, metal and concrete express the highest contribution towards embodied energy and embodied carbon.
Built Environment Evaluation in Virtual Reality Environments—A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach
(MDPI, 2020-10-03) Hu, Ming; Roberts, Jennifer
To date, the predominant tools for the evaluation of built environment quality and impact have been surveys, scorecards, or verbal comments—approaches that rely upon user-reported responses. The goal of this research project is to develop, test, and validate a data-driven approach for built environment quality evaluation/validation based upon measurement of real-time emotional responses to simulated environments. This paper presents an experiment that was conducted by combining an immersive virtual environment (virtual reality) and electroencephalogram (EEG) as a tool to evaluate Pre and Post Purple Line development. More precisely, the objective was to (a) develop a data-driven approach for built environment quality evaluation and (b) understand the correlation between the built environment characters and emotional state. The preliminary validation of the proposed evaluation method identified discrepancies between traditional evaluation results and emotion response indications through EEG signals. The validation and findings have laid a foundation for further investigation of relations between people’s general cognitive and emotional responses in evaluating built environment quality and characters.
Beyond Operational Energy Efficiency: A Balanced Sustainability Index from a Life Cycle Consideration
(MDPI, 2021-10-13) Hu, Ming
Most deep energy renovation projects focus only on an operating energy reduction and disregard the added embodied energy derived from adding insulation, window/door replacement, and mechanical system replacement or upgrades. It is important to study and address the balance and trade-offs between reduced operating energy and added embodied energy from a whole life cycle perspective to reduce the overall building carbon footprint. However, the added embodied energy and related environmental impact have not been studied extensively. In response to this need, this paper proposes a holistic sustainability index that balances the trade-off between reduced operating energy and added embodied energy. Eight case projects are used to validate the proposed method and calculation. The findings demonstrate that using a balanced sustainability index can reveal results different from a conventional operating energy-centric approach: (a) operating energy savings can be offset by the embodied energy gain, (b) the operating energy savings do not always result in a life cycle emissions reduction, and (c) the sustainability index can vary depending on the priorities the decision makers give to operating carbon, embodied carbon, and operating cost. Overall, the proposed sustainability score can provide us with a more comprehensive understanding of how sustainable the renovation works are from a life cycle carbon emissions perspective, providing a more robust estimation of global warming potential related to building renovation.
The Status of Embodied Carbon in Building Practice and Research in the United States: A Systematic Investigation
(MDPI, 2021-11-23) Hu, Ming; Wang Esram, Nora
The building construction industry accounts for 5% of global energy use and 10% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A primary source of these emissions is the manufacture of building construction materials such as steel, cement, and glass. As aggressive building energy codes push new construction towards net-zero-energy and net-zero-carbon operations, corresponding efforts to reduce embodied energy and carbon from building construction materials must be pursued to achieve the decarbonization goals of the building sector. In the past few decades, progressive building energy codes as well as the underlying research on reducing the operational energy and its related greenhouse gas emissions have stimulated changes of practice in building design and operation. In contrast, strategies to reduce embodied carbon in the substitute remaining life-cycle stages of a building are less defined and studied. The selection of building materials and systems is largely unregulated, as long as minimum health, safety, and performance standards are met. In addition, it is unclear whether we have adequate knowledge infrastructure to incorporate embodied carbon into national model codes. This study provides a comprehensive review of the current state of knowledge of existing methods, databases, and tools on embodied carbon studies, and identifies the knowledge gaps. It provides a basis for the governments, academia, industry, and other institutes to collaboratively fill in these gaps and develop standards and codes to decarbonize buildings and their interface with other sectors.
Embodied Carbon Emissions of the Residential Building Stock in the United States and the Effectiveness of Mitigation Strategies
(MDPI, 2022-09-20) Hu, Ming
According to the 2021 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction published by the United Nations Environment Programme, global carbon emissions from the building sector in 2019 were nearly 14 gigatons (Gt), representing 38% of total global carbon emissions, including 10% from building construction. In the United States, the largest knowledge gap regarding embodied carbon in buildings exists at the whole-building level. The first step in creating informative policy to reduce embodied carbon emissions is to map the existing building stock emissions and changes over time to understand the primary contributing building types and hot spots (states), and then to compare and analyze mitigation scenarios. To fill this knowledge gap, this study first developed a bottom-up model to assess the embodied carbon of the US residential building stock by using 64 archetypes to represent the building stock. Then, the embodied carbon characteristics of the current building stock were analyzed, revealing that the primary contributor was single-family detached (SD) houses. The results indicated that the exterior wall was a major contributor, and that small multifamily housing was the most embodied carbon-intense building type. Two scenarios, the baseline scenario and progressive scenario, were formed to evaluate the effectiveness of six mitigation strategies. The progressive scenario with all mitigation strategies (M1–M6) applied produced a total reduction of 33.13 Gt CO2eq (42%) in the cumulative residential building stock related to carbon emissions during 2022–2050, and a total reduction of 88.34 Gt CO2eq (80%) during 2022–2100. The results show that with an embodied carbon emissions reduction in the progressive scenario (42% by 2100), the total embodied carbon emissions comply with the carbon budget of a 2 °C pathway, but will exceed the budget for a 1.5 °C pathway.
A Multistate Study on Housing Factors Influential to Heat-Related Illness in the United States
(MDPI, 2022-11-26) Hu, Ming; Zhang, Kai; Nguyen, Quynh Camthi; Tasdizen, Tolga; Krusche, Krupali Uplekar
As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of devastating and unpredictable extreme heat events, developments to the built environment should consider instigating practices that minimize the likelihood of indoor overheating during hot weather. Heatwaves are the leading cause of death among weather-related causes worldwide, including in developed and developing countries. In this empirical study, a four-step approach was used to collect, extract and analyze data from twenty-seven states in the United States. Three housing characteristic categories (i.e., general housing conditions, living conditions, and housing thermal inertia) and eight variables were extracted from the American Housing Survey database, ResStock database and CDC’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. Multivariable regression models were used to understand the influential variables, a multicollinearity test was used to determine the dependence of those variables, and then a logistic model was used to verify the results. Three variables—housing age (HA), housing crowding ratio (HCR), and roof condition (RC)—were found to be correlated with the risk of heat-related illness (HRI) indexes. Then, a logistic regression model was generated using the three variables to predict the risk of heat-related emergency department visits (EDV) and heat-related mortality (MORD) on a state level. The results indicate that the proposed logistic regression model correctly predicted 100% of the high-risk states for MORD for the eight states tested. Overall, this analysis provides additional evidence about the housing character variables that influence HRI. The outcomes also reinforce the concept of the built environment determined health and demonstrate that the built environment, especially housing, should be considered in techniques for mitigating climate change-exacerbated health conditions.
ARCH 460 Site Analysis and Design
(2023-06) Michael Ezban
ARCH 460 is a 3-credit course which was taught by Clinical Assistant Professor Michael Ezban in Fall 2022. The course approaches site analysis and design from the disciplinary perspectives of architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, and urban planning. The course aims to provide students with an overview of the hydrologic, topographic, vegetative, cultural, and historical systems that are engaged by architects when integrating buildings and landscapes. In 2022, ARCH 460 incorporated themes and studies on the topic of decolonization and Indigenous Knowledge. The instructor worked with members of the reACT Decolonizing Education Experiential Learning Program, which received funding from the University of Maryland Teaching and Learning Transformation Center (TLTC) through a grant titled “Decolonizing Education to Meet Climate Change Demands: reACT Testbed Lab,” to pursue these additions and restructuring of the course.
Facade as Avian Habitat: Designing Multispecies Cohabitation at the University of Maryland
(2022-06-21) Ezban, Michael
Students in this studio were challenged to redesign the existing south-facing brick facade of the School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation building at the University of Maryland, College Park, using an aesthetically appealing new brick bond that functions as viable habitat for small birds of various species. Students also proposed ways of altering the existing glazing at the building to make it bird-safe. Pattern-making using brick bonds is a venerable architectural tradition, and the projections and recesses formed through brick rotation and spacing can be more than ornamental—they can create the ledges and nooks that birds can occupy to perch and roost. In this studio, students explored various methods of designing brick bonding, including both conventional modeling and parametric modeling, to create sophisticated and beautiful brick bonds that attract and house birds. The facades are intended to integrate with the building’s entry courtyard landscape to foster a more biodiverse public space for humans and nonhuman animals. They are also meant to demonstrate an approach to facade design that is inclusive and respectful of multiple species. ARCH 408 is a 6-credit design studio that is focused designing relations between human and nonhuman animals. The course was taught by Michael Ezban, RA, ASLA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Architecture. The work in this studio report covers a 3-week assignment—an introductory design project within the larger 9-week course.
Diagramming Multispecies Cohabitation
(2022-06-10) Ezban, Michael
This 3-credit course, taught by Michael Ezban, Clinical Assistant Professor of Architecture in Spring 2021, focused on the construction of analytical diagrams and animations that describe multispecies architecture—buildings intended for mutualistic cohabitation by both humans and nonhuman animals. Designing multispecies architecture is an act of inclusivity; it challenges latent and overt anthropocentric biases that exist in the design disciplines, and requires that architects seek and explore more-than-human perspectives and needs. The drawings produced by the students in this course describe entanglements between humans and nonhuman animals that shape, and are shaped by, architecture: koi ponds that provide a residence with evaporative cooling; a museum with corridors scaled to humans and elephants; stables where horses and humans can mingle on a planted roof; and more. This course asks students to attune to the functional and aesthetic decisions made by architects who have attempted to satisfy the needs of “clients” beyond the human.
AgroEcology Innovation District: Desiging Agricultural Urbanism at the University of Maryland
(2022-06-03) Ezban, Michael
ARCH 407 is a 6-credit graduate design studio taught by Michael Ezban, RA, ASLA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Architecture in Spring 2022. The studio challenged students to design the AgroEcology Innovation District (AID), a proposed new development initiative at the UMD North Campus that seeks to create and amplify new spatial relationships between agriculture and public space, human and nonhuman ecologies, and campus and urban development. AID radically reconfigures North Campus through the design of three zones: the Urban Corridor Agriculture Zone; the Campus Agriculture Zone; and Campus Cohabitation Zone. This design exercise is an exploration in “agricultural urbanism,” or urbanism in which agriculture, buildings, and infrastructure are developed in tandem, in contrast to “urban agriculture,” where agriculture is proposed for derelict areas of pre-existing urbanism. Student design strategies for the AID draw heavily from nine historical and contemporary case studies of Agricultural Urbanism projects by a range of designers.
Livestock Teaching Pavilion at the UMD Campus Farm: Design for the Farm of the Future
(2022-05-29) Ezban, Michael
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: In Spring 2022, nine architecture graduate students were challenged to design a new Livestock Teaching Pavilion for the University of Maryland Campus Farm. The work was undertaken as a 6-week project assignment in ARCH 407, taught by Michael Ezban, Clinical Assistant Professor of Architecture. The design of the Livestock Teaching Pavilion is guided by three tenets. The architecture 1) enables diverse opportunities for experiential learning; 2) fosters various agro-ecologies and multi-species interrelationships; and 3) achieves sustainability by employing historical wisdom and contemporary technologies. Alongside building design, students also visited and documented the Campus Farm, developed program analysis, explored relevant case studies, and analyzed a range of potential structural and building systems.
Optimal Renovation Strategies for Education Buildings – A Novel BIM–BPM–BEM Framework
(MDPI, 2018-09-14) Hu, Ming
The aim of this paper is to propose a novel building information model (BIM)–building performance model (BPM)–building environmental model (BEM) framework to identify the most energy-efficient and cost-effective strategies for the renovation of existing education buildings to achieve the nearly zero-energy goal while minimizing the environmental impact. A case building, the University of Maryland’s Architecture Building, was used to demonstrate the validity of the framework and a set of building performance indicators—including energy performance, environmental impacts, and occupant satisfaction—were used to evaluate renovation strategies. Additionally, this novel framework further demonstrated the interoperability among different digital tools and platforms. Lastly, following a detailed analysis and measurements, the case study results highlighted a particular energy profile as well as the retrofit needs of education buildings. Eight different renovation packages were analyzed with the top-ranking package indicating an energy saving of 62%, carbon emissions reduction of 84%, and long-term cost savings of 53%, albeit with a relatively high initial cost. The most preferable package ranked second in all categories, with a moderate initial cost.

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