Materializing Convection

Abstract

This essay uses a physical modeling technique from mechanical engineering, the filling box, as a speculative architectural design tool. In the filling box, dyed salt water is injected into acrylic models submerged within a tank of fresh water, simulating the introduction of cold air into a warm environment or, when mirrored, the introduction of warm air into a cooler environment. The models make complex and beautiful convective thermodynamic processes visible, revealing insights about environmental processes taking place within and around buildings. Mirror images of model studies are accompanied by writing that draws on the science of thermodynamics to explore the atmospheric milieu of architecture, aligning an increasingly ubiquitous concept in architectural design discourse – thermal variability – with a design technique that foregrounds this concern.

Keywords:

• filling box
• model
• thermal asymmetry
• alliesthesia
• architectural design
• convection
• thermodynamics

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 David Boswell Reid, Illustrations of the Theory and Practice of Ventilation, with Remarks on Warming, Exclusive Lighting, and the Communication of Sound (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1844).

2 Ibid., 245–246.

3 Ibid.

4 P. F. Linden, G. F. Lane-Serff, and D. A. Smeed, “Emptying Filling Boxes: The Fluid Mechanics of Natural Ventilation,” Journal of Fluid Mechanics 21 (1990): 331.

5 Philippe Rahm, “Climatic Constructions: Thermal Asymmetry in Architecture,” Harvard Design Magazine 30 (2009), 32–41; and Kiel Moe, Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), 32.

6 Christopher Hight, “The New Somatic Architecture,” Harvard Design Magazine 30 (2009): 25.

7 Rahm, “Climatic Constructions,” 34.

8 Ibid.

9 Iñaki Abalos and Renata Snetkiewicz, Essays on Thermodynamics: Architecture and Beauty (New York: Actar, 2015).

10 Moe, Thermally Active Surfaces, 119.

11 Lisa Heschong, Thermal Delight in Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979), vii.

12 Thomas Parkinson and Richard de Dear, “Thermal Pleasure in Built Environments: Physiology of Alliesthesia,” Building Research and Information 43, no. 3 (2015): 288.

13 Hight, “New Somatic Architecture,” 26.

14 Kiel Moe, “Energy and Form in the Aftermath of Sustainability,” Journal of Architectural Education 71, no. 1 (2017): 89.

15 Francine Battaglia and Ulricke Passe, Designing Spaces for Natural Ventilation: An Architect’s Guide (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 10.

16 Torricelli, 1644 cited in J. B. West, “Torricelli and the Ocean of Air: The First Measurement of Barometric Pressure,” Physiology 28, no. 2 (2013): 66.

Additional information

Lisa Moffitt is a Lecturer in Architectural Design at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Lisa’s research, practice and teaching expertise lies at the intersection of environmental design and architectural representation. Written and design research explores reciprocities between environmental processes, physical models that alter these processes and the models of architecture they reveal. Her research has been published in the journals Landscape Research and Technology | Architecture + Design (TAD); her design work as founder of Studio Moffitt has also been published widely, including in Dwell Magazine.