Faculty Research

As a Chair in Integrated Design, Branko Kolarevic explores in his research the disciplinary and professional overlaps between architecture, engineering and construction. He is interested in the use of digital technologies in the design, analysis, and production of buildings and sees the digital information models of buildings as a binding agent for what are traditionally separate professions.

Dean Nancy Pollock-Ellwand’s personal, professional and academic life has centred on landscapes, an amalgam of the tangible and intangible. Landscapes are a shared resource variously understood. They are a piece of land measured by science and law but all landscapes retain an elusive quality created by their associations. This complex resource has taken Pollock-Ellwand to many different parts of the world as a landscape architect, educator, design juror, researcher and heritage advisor.

If we are to communicate results of environmental assessments of product systems to end-users in a meaningful way, we should at least give the assessment an economic and social context. Behind Dr. Assefa's current research areas lies the expanded gist of life cycle perspective covering environmental, social and economic performance of products systems, services and structures also known as life cycle sustainability assessment.

The research area I have been exploring over the past twenty four years through participation in various local, national and international project venues is: how can the cumulative effects of human activities be incorporated into regional land-use planning and water resource management to maintain critical ecosystem and social ecological system processes?

Building operations account for about 40% of Global CO2 emissions. My research seeks large reductions in emissions for cold climate buildings while maintaining a good indoor environment. I am engaged with the building industry in demonstrating that this can be achieved in affordable ways. The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (Architecture Canada ) “2030 Challenge” initiative has the goal of carbon neutralilty all new buildings by 2030. I did the energy engineering for two of the three Prairie buildings selected as Architecture Canada 2030 Challenge case studies– the University of Calgary’s Child Development Centre (CDC) and Ecole Lawrence Grassi Middle School, Canmore.

Professor Tom Harper's teaching and research interest explore the theoretical issues which impact public planners' ability to meet the challenges of a post-modern, post-industrial, pluralistic, liberal democratic society (e.g., Canada). His theoretical work (in collaboration with Dr. Stan Stein) has aimed to develop planning theory that is relevant to contemporary planners, helping them understand the rapidly changing and turbulent environments in which they work and justifying the role and purpose of public planning and plans in society.

Musiani's Landscape Ecological Research Group has found a significant presence of tundra-type mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in woodland caribou of the southern Canadian Rockies (one thousand kilometres south of tundra distribution), also including caribou that lived in Banff National Park until 2009. GPS movement data also demonstrated migratory behaviour in the southern Canadian Rockies, and surprisingly suggested that the probability of being migratory may be higher in individual caribou carrying a tundra mtDNA haplotype.

Weather is all around us. It drives the decisions we make, the places we go, and the way we build. It appears in every newscast, has channels dedicated to its analysis and dissemination, and is the lead character in countless films. The weather is our most enigmatic celebrity, equal parts glorious and destructive. It envelops us and engages all of our senses simultaneously.

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in exploring the capacity of built spaces to respond dynamically and adapt to changes in the external and internal environments and to different patterns of use. Such explorations are technologically and socially motivated, in response to recent technological and cultural developments. Advances in embedded computation, material design, and kinetics on the technological side, and increasing concerns about sustainability, social and urban changes on the cultural side, provide a background for responsive/interactive architectural solutions that have started to emerge.

When is technology fun and when is it creepy? If Facebook suggests an old lover as a possible friend, but misses your current one, does that make your hair stand on end? Is it weird that people are sending their DNA samples to Anecestry.com to do “genetic genealogy?” What about the iPhone app that scans for nearby females and displays their photos and profiles? Chic or Creepy?