Clouston featured in Suffolk Construction video about Design Building

Clouston featured in Suffolk Construction video about Design Building

A new video and blog post on the Suffolk Building Smart Blog shows the construction of the new, engineered wood UMass Amherst Design Building. It features interviews with BCT's Dr. Peggi Clouston, as well as Tom Chung, Principal at Leers-Weinzapfel Associates and Robert Malczyk, Principal at Equilibrium Consulting. It also shows the construction site from various angles, including from above! https://videos.files.wordpress.com/qI2r6Jqm/umass-design-building3_dvd.mp4 Source: Suffolk blog post...
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Schreyer’s Book on Architectural Design with SketchUp in Second Edition

Schreyer’s Book on Architectural Design with SketchUp in Second Edition

AMHERST, Mass. — The second edition of “Architectural Design with SketchUp: 3D Modeling, Extensions, BIM, Rendering, Making, and Scripting,” by Alexander C. Schreyer is being released today. Schreyer is Program Director of the Building and Construction Technology program, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Environmental Conservation, and faculty member in the Department of Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This book, which has since its first publication become the main reference, textbook, and sourcebook for designing with SketchUp, uses step-by-step tutorials and full-color illustrations to teach anyone 3D modeling and show what one can achieve with SketchUp. Trimble SketchUp, the application at the heart of this text, is a popular 3D modeling software that comes in a free and a professional version and is used by students, architectural and interior designers, landscape planners, builders, engineers, and makers worldwide. Coming three years after a successful first edition, this new version features many updates and improvements but also a completely new chapter on “Making...
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2014 BCT Alumni & Friends Newsletter: Season’s Greetings!

2014 BCT Alumni & Friends Newsletter: Season’s Greetings!

A Message from the BCT Program Director As we conclude another successful semester in the BCT program, we are very proud to now have close to 200 undergraduate students and 10 graduate students including several PhDs. This year brought some changes to our program: With Dave Damery retiring (more on that below), I have taken over as program director. We also have a new faculty member, Dr. Ho-Sung Kim (see also below) and we will embark on a search for a replacement for Dave Damery soon. We are also very excited about a new building that will soon be our home - the “Integrated Design Building”. This state-of-the-art building will encompass many sustainable features (like an engineered wood structure) and will offer us better spaces for teaching, collaboration, labs, shops, and computer facilities. More on this below. If you haven’t done so yet, I would encourage you to join the new BCT student and alumni LinkedIn group. It is a great way to stay...
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New Publication: “A framework for integrated urban metabolism analysis tool (IUMAT)”

Abstract: IUMAT (Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool) is a system-based sustainability analysis tool. It quantifies and aggregates the social, economic and environmental capitals of urban activity in an integrated framework focusing on the metabolic flows of urban development. This paper builds on previous work on urban metabolism and advances an analytical framework that defines how the consumption of resources and resulting environmental impacts are calculated as indices of sustainability in an urban region. The benefits of integrated urban modeling using the proposed framework as well as the data sources are detailed. The underlying analytical framework for the proposed tool applies the dynamics of choice, time, and scale towards dynamically interpreting demographic and economic factors. IUMAT's calculative modules for land cover, transportation, and energy/water/resource use are described as well as the modality of connections between the modules. Nariman Mostafavi, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam, Simi Hoque, A framework for integrated urban metabolism analysis tool (IUMAT), Building and Environment, Volume 82, December 2014, Pages 702-712, ISSN 0360-1323,...
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Schreyer Presents at 2014 SketchUp 3D Basecamp in Vail, CO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUyyP9v6hw&list=PL-bndkJaV8A5pV_wb4kSy5tZTdII2OqXt As part of the 2014 iteration of Trimble's SketchUp 3D Basecamp conference, BCT Program Director Alexander Schreyer presented on “Components are our friends: How component-based modeling can improve your life” and gave a workshop (together with Daniel Tal) on “Plugins and Scripting for Architects”. This conference, held in Vail, CO was attended by approximately 250 practitioners and educators. You can watch his presentation online as part of the YouTube playlist above (look for video #8). You can also find out more about this conference on the following page: http://www.alexschreyer.net/cad/sketchup-3d-basecamp-2014-recap/  ...
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