Materials play an important part in the design of green buildings. It’s important to use materials that aren’t hazardous and reduce waste. For today’s lesson we will focus on materials made from recycled resources and learn how to use them in our building designs. We will explore hands-on a range of samples made from recycled plastic, paper, metal, and even blue jeans!

As part of our session, we demonstrated our understanding of green materials by applying them in our 3D models.

Using "green" materials.

To do this, we learned basic techniques in Google SketchUp:

• How to model architectural features, e.g., roof, windows, doors, and much more
• How to place materials into a 3D model

We had a great time thinking about how to incorporate these new material features into our digital designs. In the end, we were able to identify green materials, what they’re made of, and how they’re used; plan and sketch designs using recycled materials to improve green building practices; translate the pencil sketches to digital, 3D models in Google SketchUp.

Next time we’re going to see how passive solar influences how we design a structure. It will be interesting to see how we can harvest the energy of the sun!

Physical scale model of building using green technologies.

We’ve learned that sketching is a powerful way to capture and share design ideas. Any good designer knows that paper and pencil are tools to always have at hand. But, once you’ve got a good idea of your ideas sketched out, it’s time to move to the digital domain. So, in Week 4 we’re covering the use of 3D digital modeling tools to get our designs into the computer.

Architects and engineers use many computer applications to design green buildings. Today, we will take a look at a specific application - Google SketchUp. As part of the design process, we will translate our designs from pencils to pixels using the Google SketchUp 3D modeling software.

We’ll use the Google SketchUp 3D modeling software to create and communicate project ideas. We will also use the software to create and communicate ideas in a collaborative way. As part of this week’s session, we will learn:

1. Basic tools in Google SketchUp
2. Changing views in Google SketchUp
3. Drawing shapes in Google SketchUp
4. Move, cut, and paste objects in Google SketchUp
5. Place materials for shapes

We’ll use the Google SketchUp 3D modeling software to create and communicate project ideas. We will also use the software to create and communicate ideas in a collaborative way.