THE EVOLUTION OF BUILDING SCIENCE AT SAIT By Blair Marsden, Academic Chair, Architectural Technologies & Civil Engineering Technology, School of Construction
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or the public at large, Building Science rarely comes to mind when we are in the built environment. Indeed, many of the metrics of a successful building suggest that people should not notice good building science at all. Here at SAIT, we have put efforts into the Architectural Technologies program to integrate building science into all aspects of the curriculum. The aim in general is to facilitate a curriculum that is a more applied, holistic projectbased approach that closely mimics how buildings come together and how the various disciplines and process are realized from start to finish. To
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that end, every core subject, their respective educational outcomes and their learning objectives touch the project directly and by extension touch every other course. We aim to break down the silos of teaching independent courses and focus instead on a fully integrated and meaningful collaborative approach. All courses serve the semester project at hand and all courses overlap and inform each other. In years past, building science-specific courses were part of the curriculum. All the basic concepts of building science were taught in those courses via conventional teaching methods, but what was lacking was real application of these concepts to building projects.
A more explicit project-based approach allows for these learned concepts to be actualized, challenged, critiqued and revised as the project evolves. In short, the consequences of building science are more visible. All this to help students understand that the myriad quantity and variety of components, materials, assemblies, products and services actually mean something; that there are systems nested inside of other systems that make for a meaningful interconnected whole that directly affect the well being of the user. They learn that the interaction of the building with the outside environment as well as the interaction of the building with itself
