M 9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Anderson Hall, Room 153
A building forms part of a constant environment and responds to natural forces around it and even effects of ecology. Humidity is one of these forces, this course will investigate the different effects humidity has on construction systems and the building envelope, first by looking at the causes of excessive moisture and the problems it generates for a building it’s materiality and its occupants.
A look of humidity effects from the viewpoint of human comfort and physical and psychic wellbeing, and the problems in relation to the central paradox of architecture, on how to provide a stable, predetermined internal environment in an external environment that is in constant flux across time and space, as combining the functional and the aesthetic.
Studying the transfer of water between the environment and the building materiality (porosity and their voids), students will learn how to describe water contents and to examine humidity transfer mechanisms, like Air humidity, Psychometrics, Building components, Capillary damping, Water vapour diffusion, Liquid water intrusion & moisture.
Students will learn to establish measures to prevent the causes of excessive moisture by studying how a building design changes its environmental contexts in Hot & Humid regions.
STEM and Qualified non-architecture major students are welcome. For questions regarding course content, please send an email to Luis.Barajas.Saldana@rice.edu.