Author(s): Tian Li, Yujia Wang & Yi Lu
As the urgency of climate change accelerates, architectural education faces a pivotal shift toward integrating environmental performance, data-driven reasoning, and creative design thinking. This study presents a pedagogical model that reframes the traditional design studio as a transscalar laboratory for high-performance and net-zero design learning. Developed through a graduate-level design research studio, the framework guides students from conceptual speculation to evidence-based decision making across three stages: (i) sustainable campus planning, (ii) high-performance individual building design/development, and (iii) AI-assisted energy and carbon simulations. By coupling analytic rigor with visual imagination, the studio cultivates “systems of thought and imagination” where design thinking becomes both method and mindset. Students employ iterative workflows that merge composition, systems analysis, urban fabric, cultural study, and environmental simulation, using tools such as ClimateStudio®, ZeroTool®, and MEBA Tool, to quantify energy use, optimize renewable strategies, and visualize site-scale decarbonization. The studio structure encourages collaborative learning, peer critique, and performance-driven design communication, linking abstract environmental goals with architectural form-making and storytelling. The study documents selected student project samples that explore low-rise net-zero cultural and research campuses. Through these works, students learn to balance ecological metrics with spatial, social, and aesthetic values, reframing sustainability as both measurable and experiential. Ultimately, this study argues that future design education not only involves systematic design thinking but also evolves beyond prescriptive sustainability checklists toward an integrated, data-informed design philosophy. By embedding AI-enabled simulation and systems literacy into the creative process, the studio prepares the next generation of architects to envision and realize climate-responsive, regenerative futures.
Volume Editors
Reed Kroloff & Francisco J. Rodríguez-Suárez
ISBN
978-1-944214-52-4