Architecture students present at International conferences

Victoria University of Wellington, School of Architecture postgraduate students presented their research at two international conferences last month, showcasing the top quality research in the school.

Harry's research, a computer generated image showing airflow and ventilation in buildings in a curved layout.
Harry’s research: analysis of airflow and ventilation in buildings in a curved layout, the research uses computational fluid dynamics analysis and simulation.

Harry Yi He, Claudia van Velthooven and Yingyi Zhang presented at the International Symposium on Architectural Interchanges in Asia (ISAIA), a biennial symposium co-sponsored by the Architectural Institute of Japan, the Architectural Society of China and the Architectural Institute of Korea.

The theme of the conference was ‘Resilience and Diversity: rethinking Asian architecture for the next generation’. PhD student Harry presented a paper on airflow and ventilation for building layouts in high density cities. Claudia, Masters student, presented a paper on how wind simulations might be used in building design. Yingyi presented her PhD research on extending form based coding to include high density cities.

The presentations were very well received, with Harry and Claudia receiving awards for the Best Academic sessions.

The second conference was the Parallelism in Architecture, Environment and Computing Techniques conference in London. Which explores architectural design technologies and computational design software, and considers the similarities with other architectural and computing fields.

Masters students Claudia van Velthooven, Blaire Haslop, James Holth and Scott Meekings presented research on using various technologies to influence architectural design – wind simulations, digital decay, Virtual Reality and personal online data.

As well as presenting their research, the conferences gave the students the opportunity to meet with people in the industry, including world renowned architects Patrick Schumacher of Zaha Hadid and Toyo Ito of Toyo Ito and Associates.

These students are supervised by Prof. Marc-Aurel Schnabel, Prof. Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Assoc. Prof. Michael Donn, and Kevin Sweet