Update, July 31, 2020: After publishing its fourth issue, the Prometheus series was awarded the 2020 Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals by the Center for Architecture.
"The jury was particularly impressed with the fresh and relevant content, beautiful design, and diverse viewpoints in the journal," says Benjamin Prosky, executive director of the Center for Architecture and the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter.
Congratulations to all of our student guest editors: Mohammed Alkhabbaz, Saad AlGhamdi, Dan Costa Baciu, Narjes Abbasabadi, Mehdi Ashayeri and Ezgi Bay (with Marcos Petroli).
The College of Architecture is pleased to announce that the fourth issue of Prometheus: Journal of the Ph.D. Program in Architecture is now available in print and electronic formats. The issue, edited by Mehdi Ashayeri (Ph.D. ’20) and Ezgi Bay (Ph.D. ’20), is centered on the research of high-performance and energy-efficient buildings and urban spaces.
Prometheus is based on the contributions to the Ph.D. program’s international symposium held annually and also organized by Ph.D. students. In addition to research, each issue of the journal contains an extensive Ph.D. program overview of all the community’s accomplishments and activities.
“There is much research still needed in terms of data-driven and simulation-based methodologies to address urgent global and local issues related to climate change, environmental degradation, and sustainability of cities,” Ashayeri and Bay write in the issue’s introduction.
Within the issue’s pages are several papers from Illinois Institute of Technology researchers, as well as from other universities, proposing solutions backed up by data to build more environmentally sound cities. These range from advances in green roof design that reduce stormwater runoff, to innovative tall building façades that facilitate natural ventilation, to using parametric energy modeling to design high-performance urban housing.
“Learning from multiple case studies in certain climatic conditions, various computational experiments, and analysis techniques used by Ph.D. students for their research is essential,” says Bay. “As we know, climate change and its long-term consequences will affect the next generations. So, I am glad that our journal draws attention to the increased awareness of sustainable built environments.”
As editors, Ashayeri and Bay curated the selections of research in Prometheus during the final year of their doctoral program. For his work on a data-driven simulation framework for building energy and air quality, Ashayeri received an Architectural Research Centers Consortium King Student Medal for 2020. Bay received the College of Architecture Ph.D. Program Spirit Award for her contributions to the Ph.D. community at the college.
“The multidisciplinary characteristics of sustainability motivated us to cover a wide range of topics from a variety of perspectives,” says Ashayeri. “There was substantial joy in finding new and innovative research, resources, and methods and tools and bringing them to life in ways our readers can practically apply to improve quality of human life in buildings and reduce their environmental impacts.”
The fourth issue of Prometheus is available through IIT Paul V. Galvin Library and for direct download here.