A Virtual Tour Of Energy Conscious Architecture

As technology rapidly changes, the importance of educating and training diverse populations of civil/construction engineering/science students becomes more critical. With the advances in information technology (IT) over the last decade, the traditional teaching format of having an individual lecture to an audience has been supplemented, and in some cases, replaced by the rapid development and implementation of new distance learning methods. It is increasingly becoming important to develop a web based 3-D visualization and animation to explain the various environmental conscious concepts and elements. The objective of this research was to develop a virtual tour of an energy conscious building showing the various concepts, elements and technical aspects of the building. The tech savvy youth of today will find it more interesting to work on such a real time virtual model, as it would make learning fun. These visualization techniques can be valuable aids not only in teaching in the classroom but also an effective selfdirected tool for open learning via the web.