Emerging Simulation Techniques Across Industry and Academia – IBPSA-USA Boston Chapter

In this presentation, Krista Palen of Transsolar and Christoph Reinhart of the MIT Building Technology Program will discuss emerging simulation techniques across industry and academia, including applications of daylight, thermal, and natural ventilation simulation.

Presenters: 

Presentation 1:

Krista Palen
Associate Director | Transsolar Inc

Krista will discuss simulation processes that helped to shape some high-performance buildings that have recently opened or are currently under construction, including the Tianjin Juilliard School, The Arbour at George Brown College, and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. This will include daylight, thermal and natural ventilation.

Krista Palen is an Associate Director of Transsolar New York. She is interested in design at the intersection of architecture, engineering, computation, and ecology. Her expertise in passive design includes daylight modeling, thermal simulation, and natural ventilation design. Krista’s varied education in environmental engineering, architecture, and interdisciplinary design provides a unique skill set to support architects to design high comfort low energy buildings and environments.

Presentation 2:

Christoph Reinhart
Professor | MIT Building Technology Program

This presentation deals with the evolving use of daylight simulations in architectural practice. The goal is to empower all architects to make deliberate, evidence-based design decisions to create well-lit, glare-free indoor environments. The presentation covers lessons learnt from working with a group of leading architecture firms, environmental consultants and daylight system manufacturers and offers some thought on how these groups can best collaborate going forward.

Christoph Reinhart is a building scientist and architectural educator working in the field of sustainable building design and environmental modeling. At MIT he is leading the Sustainable Design Lab (SDL), an inter-disciplinary group with a grounding in architecture that develops design workflows, planning tools and metrics to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings and neighborhoods. He is also the head of Solemma, a technology company and Harvard University spinoff as well as Strategic Development Advisor for mapdwell, a solar mapping company and MIT spinoff. Products originating from SDL and Solemma are used in practice and education in over 90 countries.