Swiss-Korean Academic Exchange Program ARC-HEST
© 2019 smart living lab
The smart living lab has launched the “ARC-HEST Architecture for human environment with smart technologies program” on the topic of sustainable and comfortable built working environment. This Swiss-Korean academic exchange program comprises a Summer School in Seoul and a Winter School in Fribourg. The application deadline is on 3 March 2019 for EPFL Master students in architecture (ENAC).
Attention to human comfort and performance in the indoor built environment is growing worldwide due to the increased number of hours spent indoors and the space limitation in highly populated cities. The working environment and cultural differences, traditions, and challenges of South Korea and Switzerland is fertile soil to brainstorm around the indoor built environment issues. The ARC-HEST exchange program focuses on the synergy between architectural design, human factors, and technologies in the office buildings as well as their combined effects on the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and interaction of the occupants with the building.
Both the Summer and the Winter schools programs will comprise lectures, workshops, and studios. All multidisciplinary group works will be closely associated with visits, on-site measurement sessions, performance assessments and interviews over selected case study buildings equipped with workplaces in shared offices. Based on their findings, the groups will then try to develop innovative solutions for the improvement of the built indoor environment, the satisfaction of the occupants and the human-building interactions. A special focus will be put on the relationships between these functional features and the architectural aspects in order to better conciliate their respective requirements.
Behavior of buildings and indoor environmental quality are generally different for heating (winter) and cooling (summer) seasons. For these reasons, the topic of Summer comfort will be investigated in South Korea during the Summer Exchange School on 18-30 August 2019 and the topic of Winter comfort will be studied in Switzerland during the Winter Exchange School on 2-14 February 2020. For more information about the application process, see the ARC-HEST program’s webpage.