Design-Tech: Building Science for Architects

The third edition of Design-Tech provides an indispensable, holistic resource for integrating building technologies into critically designed, performance-based architectural projects. The book’s format follows the developmental stages of a typical architectural project; it provides a step-by-step process for addressing and integrating building sciences from first principles of human comfort, materials, structures, and environmental systems to advanced construction systems and measures of building performance. Short chapters incorporate easy-to-understand information with hundreds of useful illustrations, tables, and references that explain the why as well as the how of building science. The content focuses on what designers need to know in the studio to create sustainably designed, integrated buildings, and it prepares them for future discussions with engineers, contractors, and consultants.

The updated format builds a coherent framework for integrated project design studio development, necessary for all contemporary accredited schools of architecture. Chapters build upon critical project information from schematics toward technical integration. New chapters emphasize performance-based design strategies including sustainable design values, critical schematic planning, enhanced building envelope design strategies, and advanced performance systems. Enhanced visualization of schematic design strategies helps explain sustainable design standards, code compliance, and structural schematics, and throughout, the third edition focuses on contemporary issues such as embodied carbon, heavy timber construction, life cycle costs, and long-term performance.

This will be a must-read for all architecture students looking for an accessible guide to building science.

Jason Alread, AIA, LEED AP, is a Professor and the former Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Florida. He was educated at UF and Yale University and has been a registered architect in professional practice for over 30 years. His teaching and research focus on the integration of craft and technology, building performance, design methodologies, and professional practice.

Thomas Leslie, FAIA, teaches building design, history, and technology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Leslie received degrees in architecture from Illinois and Columbia and spent seven years with Norman Foster + Partners, London, and San Francisco. He has written extensively on the history of building arts and sciences.

Rob Whitehead, FAIA, LEED AP, is a licensed architect, an Associate Professor of Architecture, and an Associate Dean at Iowa State University’s College of Design. His teaching experience includes integrated design studios, design-build courses, and an award-winning structural design course sequence at Iowa State University. His book Structures by Design: Thinking, Making, Breaking has been adopted worldwide.