Architectural Engineering

Architectural Engineering (ArchE) deals with integrated design, construction and operation of buildings. It includes all engineering aspects related to the built environment: building envelope, mechanical systems (HVAC), electrical systems, lighting systems, construction, indoor environmental quality and human comfort- and is therefore related to multi-disciplinary research and education.

Herrick Labs

Buildings in the U.S. account for more than one third of the total energy use and associated Greenhouse Gas Emissions. With increasing concern about climate change and energy prices, Architectural Engineers have a critical task for the following decades. In Civil Engineering's Architectural Engineering area of emphasis, students have the opportunity to study the integration of different building systems and to learn how to design for sustainability and energy efficiency. The area of emphasis provides flexibility and offers several courses on energy and buildings, design of electrical/mechanical systems, lighting systems, as well as on building envelope, building controls, renewable energy sources, indoor air quality and energy modeling. A minor in Architectural Engineering is also available to all students in the College of Engineering except students in the School of Civil Engineering.

Building Exterior

The faculty members of Architectural Engineering are dedicated to research and teaching, with focus on Building Science and design/operation of energy-efficient buildings. Specific topics of research include: thermal and visual comfort, indoor air quality and ventilation, innovative building envelopes, daylighting and electric lighting design & control, energy-efficient equipment, HVAC system design and control, smart buildings, passive/active solar energy technologies, building energy modeling and simulation, and sustainable/green building design.

Architectural Engineering faculty are associated with the Ray W. Herrick Labs. Together with the HVAC Group in ME, we have one of the largest teams in the US conducting research related to the built environment.

The Architectural Engineering group has unique, state-of-the-art facilities to study building performance in terms of energy and indoor environmental quality. These include several room-scale facilities at the Architectural Engineering Laboratories, located at the Bowen Lab, as well as whole building-scale facilities at the Center for High Performance Buildings, located in Herrick Labs.


Spotlights

March 9, 2022

Mopping can create air pollution that rivals city streets

A new study, co-authored by Assistant Professor Brandon Boor, shows how surface cleaning using commercial disinfectants can generate secondary indoor pollutants affecting indoor air quality and health, especially for workers repeatedly exposed to disinfectants.
March 4, 2022

Danielle Wagner selected as Dean's Teaching Fellow

PhD student Danielle Wagner has been selected as one of four Purdue Engineering Dean's Teaching Fellows for 2022. Graduate students selected for the program embody a strong commitment to mentoring, service and outreach.
October 22, 2021

Seungjae Lee starts as tenure-track faculty at the University of Toronto

Dr. Seungjae Lee (Ph.D. '19) started as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto (ranked in the top 10 engineering schools worldwide) in July 2021. Seungjae completed his PhD in the Architectural Engineering emphasis area of Civil Engineering. He was advised by Prof. Thanos Tzempelikos and Prof. Panagiota Karava. In 2020-2021 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
February 2, 2021

Thanos Tzempelikos receives best paper award from Society of Light and Lighting

Thanos Tzempelikos, Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering and Ray W. Herrick Labs, has been awarded the prestigious Leon Gaster Award from the Society of Light and Lighting as a co-author of the paper, "Cross-validation and robustness of daylight glare metrics," published in the esteemed journal Lighting Research and Technology in November 2019.
September 21, 2020

New Purdue lab provides tiny home for sustainability education

At just 192 square feet, Purdue University's newest civil engineering laboratory is remarkably small for a research space. Yet, Purdue professor Nusrat Jung has big plans for it. The laboratory comes in the form of a tiny house, called zEDGE, that Jung and a team of students designed and engineered for testing the energy efficiency of large structures on a small scale. Built on a trailer for easy mobility, zEDGE (pronounced "zee-edge") is stationed outside Hampton Hall on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus.
November 15, 2019

Tackling indoor air pollution: the story of Nandi improved kitchen designs

Many Nandi homes, like other traditional Kenyan communities, cook using biomass fuels like wood and agricultural wastes in inadequately ventilated kitchens. The women and children who spend more time in these kitchens suffer the most from the effects of indoor air pollution, which is linked to many respiratory illnesses and deaths. The Nandi-improved kitchens were designed jointly with women from Nandi and with the help of the Purdue University Global Air Quality Trekkers (GAQT) engineering team led by Professor Brandon Boor and Ph.D student Danielle Wagner.
October 4, 2019

How much are you polluting your office air just by existing?

Just by breathing or wearing deodorant, you have more influence over your office space than you might think, a growing body of evidence shows. But could these basic acts of existence also be polluting the air in the office room where you work? To find out, a team of engineers led by Assistant Professor Brandon Boor has been conducting one of the largest studies of its kind in the office spaces of a building rigged with thousands of sensors. The goal is to identify all types of indoor air contaminants and recommend ways to control them through how a building is designed and operated.
May 24, 2019

Danielle Wagner receives 2019 ASHRAE graduate award

Civil Engineering Ph.D. student Danielle Wagner has received a 2019-2020 ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers) Grant-in-Aid Award. Recipients are chosen on the basis of the scope of their research, as well as involvement in local ASHRAE chapters and related activities.
October 21, 2018

Sustainable, human-centered buildings

Somebody has turned up the conference room thermostat, again. And a co-worker wears a blanket at her desk. Sound familiar? It is more than annoying. In a recent survey of more than 1,000 office workers, 46 percent reported that their office was too hot or too cold. In fact, building occupants affect up to 30 percent of its energy usage. The building sector in the U.S. accounts for about 40 percent of primary energy usage, 71 percent of electricity usage and 38 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. Panagiota Karava, the Jack and Kay Hockema Associate Professor in Civil Engineering, wants to help change that.
May 3, 2018

Tianren Wu receives 2018 ASHRAE graduate award

Civil Engineering Ph.D. student Tianren Wu was recently named recipient of the prestigious ASHRAE Grant-in-Aid Award for 2018-2019. This $10,000 award is given to the most outstanding graduate students performing research in the High Performance Buildings or HVAC fields. The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers considers applications from all over the world.
January 10, 2018

Babies stir up clouds of bio-gunk when they crawl

When babies crawl, their movement across floors, especially carpeted surfaces, kicks up high levels of dirt, skin cells, bacteria, pollen, and fungal spores, a new study has found. The infants inhale a dose of bio bits in their lungs that is four times (per kilogram of body mass) what an adult would breathe walking across the same floor. As alarming as that sounds, lead researcher Brandon Boor of Purdue University is quick to add that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
August 29, 2017

Seungjae Lee receives 2017 ASHRAE graduate award

PhD student Seungjae Lee was recently named recipient of the prestigious American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Grant-in-Aid Award for 2017-2018. This $10,000 award is given to the most outstanding graduate students performing research in the High Performance Buildings or HVAC fields.
July 7, 2016

How to make a healthy bed

CNN's Senior Medical Correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, visited Purdue's Herrick Labs in April to film a segment about the indoor air quality of bedding materials with Assistant Professor Brandon Boor.
September 1, 2015

Purdue team led by Prof. Panagiota Karava wins $1.2M NSF award

Associate Professor Panagiota Karava is leading a multi-disciplinary Purdue team that has been awarded a $1.2M National Science Foundation grant for their project "CyberSEES -Type 2: Human-centered systems for cyber-enabled sustainable buildings."
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