Siobhan Rockcastle was invited to give a two-day workshop to 2nd-year architecture students at Cal Poly SLO on February 22-23. This workshop was funded by a Nuckolls Funds Grant awarded to faculty at Cal Poly and was designed to infuse outside expertise into the design of core curriculum components in environmental design. Siobhan was accompanied by Kelly Kottlowski, a recent M.Arch graduate from the University of Oregon, who supported the delivery of workshop content and design critiques.
The students produced rough scaled physical models of their design projects and captured these using compact 360-degree cameras. Over the course of two hours, the students manipulated the models to alter the distribution of daylight and drive perceptual effects. These 360 photographs were then uploaded to an online site where students could explore the scenes from an immersive point-of-view. The workshop moved digital on day two and students were introduced to workflows in Climate Studio to model daylight performance metrics and produce accurate daylight renderings using Radiance.