For the first week of my Architectural Engineering course about Building Envelope Systems, we talked about functions and performance aspects of the building envelope, from technical to environmental and sociocultural design considerations. We had a lot of fun with a 15-min class activity where I asked students to use AI to design the world’s worst building envelope! Then we voted on our favorites, and those were the two “winner” projects:
– a building with asbestos-covered cardboard cladding and an uninsulated glass ceiling;
– and a building with a roof waterfall and a Swiss cheese facade covered in barbed wire 😂
There were also several honorable mentions.
The idea behind the activity was to think about what NOT to do, experiment with new tools, practice our creativity, and start collaborating with their project teams for the quarter (and of course, have fun).