Designing for Sun, Wind, & Light: Analysis Techniques

Most decisions that affect a building's energy use occur during the schematic design stage of the project. The effort required to implement those decisions at the beginning of the design process is small compared to the effort that would be necessary later on.

The purpose of this 5-hour interactive online course is to present analysis techniques that enable the designer to understand, before the building is designed, how the building is likely to use energy, so that appropriate architectural design strategies for daylighting and passive solar heating and cooling can be a basic and integral part of the initial design idea. Topics covered in this course include Climate as a Context, Program and Use, Form and Envelope, Combining Climate, Program and Form, and Electric and Hot Water Loads. Each section includes techniques that help the designer define the context of the problem by understanding the sun, wind, and light resources of a particular site and climate.

This course contains downloadable PDF files which require Adobe Acrobat.

This course includes a multiple-choice test at the end of each section. You must have Flash Player Version 7 or higher to view some parts of this course. We also recommend you view this course in Internet Explorer.