Proceedings of the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture & Urban Design

Abstract

Welcome to the 2015 Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD) in Alexandria, Virginia. SimAUD continues to bring together top researchers and practitioners in the fields of architecture, urban design, urban planning, building science, visualization, and systems engineering, with the overarching goal of achieving a positive and lasting impact on society though the simulation-aided design of compelling and sustainable built environments This year saw outstanding participation from the community: a record 103 abstracts were contributed; among these a record 63 manuscripts were completed and peer-reviewed, several of which featured accompanying data sets or videos; and a full program of 30 papers were ultimately accepted and included in the proceedings. Top international universities such as UCL, RMIT, the Technion, ETH Zurich, SUTD, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, and many others are represented in the final program. Also prominently featured in the accepted works are design schools such as the Architectural Association and CITA, and design and engineering practices such as Thornton Tomasetti, Zaha Hadid Architects, LMN Architects, Populous, SOM, and Baumann Consulting. Among the program's highlights are several papers on optimization from both the design and engineering domains; new design methods for solar shading, experimental prototypes and fabrication, cities, and stadiums; ground-breaking work on energy modeling and ventilation; new developments in building information and performance data; and a number of contributions which investigate various aspects of human behavior.