The subject ‘Building Services’ covers a wide range of engineering services and equipment that are designed and installed in almost all major buildings, to produce satisfactory conditions for both health and comfort requirements of the buildings’ occupants. An architect is expected to have a reasonably good understanding of the performance and maintenance requirements of these service elements in order to design and construct energy-efficient buildings. Architects and engineers need to understand each other’s requirements and constraints of operation in order to deliver a quality indoor environment.

So to facilitate the teaching of engineering subjects to non-engineering students, I have successfully utilised the Integrated Virtual Learning Environ-ment (IVLE) for a brand new elective course, ‘Renewable Energy and Low Energy Architecture’, first mounted during the 1998/99 session. One key feature of the course is the way in which the use of IVLE has been closely integrated into the design studio, which is the focal point in the teaching and learning of architecture where the student explores, expands and applies whatever knowledge he has acquired in a real-life context.

Although the basic principles of the various components of building services are taught in lectures, seminars, and laboratories, the amount of information on building services actually required for use in the studio is enormous. For instance, a student usually works alone in the studio and can suddenly be faced with the problem of deciding upon the fenestration or orientation of the building, the location and size of the air-conditioning plant room or other similar situations. A trip to the library to look up the relevant information will not only consume a lot of time, but also disrupt one’s train of thought at the drawing board. To enable the student to access material from his workplace using his computer, I have used the IVLE to deliver information on building services at the drawing table as and when the information is required. In addition, mounted on the IVLE for students to access are much of my lecture materials (developed in PowerPoint presentation format), case studies of local and overseas buildings as well as miscellaneous materials and appropriate links.

Many of my students have also conducted course discussions on the IVLE. Working in groups, almost all of the students have mounted their work and submissions as well as provided cross-referencing through the IVLE course pages. When stumped on particular issues, students have been able to email me directly to seek clarifications and I have tried to respond to them as soon as possible. In general, my students and I have found the IVLE extremely useful and are grateful for this facility.