technology

A building energy use "tune-up" procedure developed by researchers at the Texas A&M Energy Systems Lab has so far yielded more than $100 million in energy savings from little more than 300 client buildings, said Charles Culp, professor of architecture and ESL associate director.

Significant energy savings could be realized in small homes in hot climates with an air conditioning system being researched by Simge Andolsun, a Ph.D. architecture student at Texas A&M, that cools rooms based on where people are at different times during the day.

Celebrating its 20th year, Viz-a-GoGo, the annual showcase of student work from the visualization programs at Texas A&M University, took its audience on a time-traveling adventure — in a DeLorean, no less — with a series of interstitial stories paying tribute to the program's heritage.

Detailed physical and digital models of Texas A&M’s campus were created this spring by Ph.D. architecture students to support graduate and undergraduate design projects, including a recent student effort aimed at reimagining the University Avenue corridor.

It’s unusual for an intern to head meetings between mechanical, electrical and plumbing subcontractors at a construction jobsite, but Tanner Trimm, a fourth-year construction science student at Texas A&M, did just that.

The National Science Foundation presented visualization professor Ann McNamara with its prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award to fund her research to enhance mobile augmented reality technology, which is used to combine real and virtual worlds.

For as little as $1, anyone can help finance the development of Simple Bracket, a March Madness app that its developers, two former Texas A&M environmental design students, say will make it easy and fun to fill out brackets and compete with friends and family for the title of best bracket in the land.

The national Network for Sciences, Engineering, Arts & Design, headed by Carol LaFayette, associate professor of visualization, is advancing the STEM to STEAM movement: adding art and design components, the "A," to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

Students developed a software tool that can determine a building’s potential energy use from its design, as well as its rainwater harvesting potential and other characteristics as part of a fall 2012 graduate architecture class.

Models of an innovative structural system that could significantly reduce the amount of steel required to construct bridges, arches, domes and columns have been produced by Michael Bunch and Saied Zarrinmehr, two Ph.D. architecture students at Texas A&M.

Digital devices in the very near future won’t just be handheld, said a former Texas A&M environmental design student in an online article about technology trends.

Semester culminating exhibits showcasing the creations of graduate and undergraduate visualization students featured a wide variety of media. See Glen Vigus' photos of the MFA-Viz exhibit and the fall undergraduate visualization show.

“Pop/Op,” a new piece of kinetic art inspired by Pop Art and pop-up books, the result of a collaboration between design and aerospace engineering students at Texas A&M, is a new adornment to the Bright engineering buildling’s south entrance.

A section of the Langford A building’s rooftop was transformed fall 2012 into a green roof with succulents, grasses and a weather station by an interdisciplinary group of Texas A&M students in phase one of a three-year research initiative.

TEX-FAB, an organization founded by three former Texas A&M environmental design students, is facilitating collaborative exchanges through an emerging network of companies, institutions and design professionals in Texas and the Southwest that are working with digital fabrication and parametric modeling.