Tag Archives: Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech Architecture students awarded $4,000 in scholarships from Mid Atlantic Chapter of RCI

Posted on by

Students from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies’ School of Architecture + Design recently competed for $4,000 in scholarships sponsored by the RCI Mid Atlantic Chapter, an affiliated chapter of RCI, Incorporated, which is an international association of professional consultants, architects, and engineers who specialize in the specification and design of roofing, waterproofing, and exterior wall systems. This work was part of two competitions developed and juried by School of Architecture + Design faculty members Elizabeth Grant, Mario Cortes, and James Jones, along with Matthew Innocenzi, president of the Mid Atlantic Chapter of RCI. One competition involved Grant and Cortes’ third-year design lab and the second was a research competition open to all students in the school.

The undergraduate design competition was a 10-week-long exercise assigned to students enrolled in Grant and Cortes’ design lab. Their challenge was to design a building envelope museum for one of three urban sites in Roanoke, Va. The proposed museums were to celebrate the design of building enclosures from traditional practices to new technological developments in the building sciences. On November 8, 2012, the students presented boards and models of their designs at the RCI Mid Atlantic Chapter’s Educational Seminar held in Squires Student Center.

The research competition involved a presentation and display of proposed research related to the design of the building envelope. The competition represented work by graduate and undergraduate students in the School of Architecture + Design seeking new inquiry targeted at improving the built environment. The posters from the research competition were also displayed at the meeting.

In the design competition, $1,000 was awarded to first-place winner Alise Willis, of Raleigh, N.C; $750 to second-place winnerOluwafemi Ibitoye of Middletown, N.Y.; and $500 to third-place winner Thomas Doorn of Cary, N.C. All three are third year architecture majors.

Daeung Kim of Bucheon, South Korea, a PhD student in Architecture and Design Research, was awarded $1,000 in the research competition for his winning entry dealing with computational fluid dynamics at roof parapet conditions. Entrants in both competitions who did not win an award were granted $50 each by the chapter for their contributions.

The winning students each presented their work to a group of architects, engineers, roof consultants, and material suppliers as a part of a session dedicated to the competitions during the RCI Mid Atlantic Chapter’s Educational Seminar. Earlier in the year, the Mid Atlantic Chapter decided to award scholarships to aspiring students studying architecture or engineering who are pursuing a career related to the building envelope. The scholarship program was initiated and chaired by Michael Violette, chairman of the RCI Mid Atlantic Chapter scholarship committee.

Both the Mid Atlantic Chapter of RCI and the RCI Foundation, a national philanthropic organization committed to education and research, are partners with the School of Architecture + Design’s Center for High Performance Environments. The chapter and the foundation have collectively contributed $15,000 to date to the advancement of student research and scholarship. Through its student scholarship program, the RCI Foundation also fully sponsored the attendance of three students, Kenneth Black, Kongkun Charoenvisal, and Ana Jaramillo, at the RCI 27th International Convention and Trade Show held in Dallas, Texas in March 2012.

Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies is composed of four schools: the School of Architecture + Design, including architecture, industrial design, interior design and landscape architecture; the School of Public and International Affairs, including urban affairs and planning, public administration and policy and government and international affairs; the Myers-Lawson School of Construction, which includes building construction in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies and construction engineering management in the College of Engineering; and the School of the Visual Arts, including programs in studio art, visual communication and art history.

2011 Incentive Fund Award - Major Award

Posted on by

Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design was awarded the major Incentive Fund Award of $2400 to support dissemination and dialogue of a research project focusing on school mechanical system types in context of student achievement. Associate professor Michael Ermann and PhD Candidate Ana Jaramillo will publish the results in several journals but, more critically, present the findings directly to school boards in order to have the most impact.

Study summary
Researchers and practitioners have found, to no oneʼs surprise, that the type of mechanical system utilized to thermally condition a space impacts the noise level for occupants. Indeed, in schools, air conditioning systems are by far the largest contributors to room noise. Pumps, remote to a conditioned classroom, create little mechanical system noise, so hydronic systems (without radiator fans) are generally the quietist. Air systems with centralized air handling units and remote chillers/boilers are louder as fan noise radiates inside ductwork from mechanical rooms to classrooms. Fan coil units feature fans exposed to the classroom itself, and are therefore louder still. Finally, unitary or “DX” through-the-wall systems see both fans and air conditioning compressors exposed to the students, and are generally loudest.

At least 10 studies demonstrate the impact of noise on youthʼs cognitive performance. Of course noise impairs adults also, but childrenʼs brains are not fully able to effectively separate acoustic signal from noise until they are about 15 years old, making it more difficult to cull the teacherʼs speech from the drone of the air-conditioning system.

No studies yet have bridged those two widely-supported findings: if the type of mechanical system impacts (and often dictates) the noise level in the room, and if the noise level in the room impacts the performance of the student, might there be a correlation between mechanical system type and student achievement?

We are currently asking that question, correlating student achievement scores with school mechanical system types. Our pilot study, which examined the mechanical systems and test scores of all 10 elementary schools in a local school district, found very high confidence levels in a correlation.

With help from the HVAC technical supervisor, we are expanding the study to the Los Angeles Unified School District. There are several advantages to looking at the LA schools: first, the “value-added” method has been used to measure the varying impacts different district schools have in raising or lowering individual student scores from one year to the next. Nowhere in the U.S. is there more analysis of recent school performance in studentsʼ standardized tests. Second, as it is the second largest school district in the U.S., the study, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Times, examined a large sample—more statistically significant than our small local district. The dataset includes more than 800,000 student/year records examined over a period of seven school years at 473 schools. Third, about half the school district pupils have difficulty with the English language. The impact of noise on cognition is acute in non-native speakers, so if there is a correlation between noise and performance, we might expect to find it in Los Angeles. Finally, the Southern California climate necessitates air conditioning almost year-round, so data isnʼt clouded by variations in heating and cooling systems.