Incoming UO architecture PhD student Amir Nezamdoost joins A&AA after winning two recent competitions: the International VELUX Award 2016 for students of architecture in the Americas region for his investigations into automated blinds in daylight investigations; and best student paper at SimBuild 2016 for his research on daylighting simulation.

Nezamdoost earned his MArch in 2015 from the University of Idaho, where he worked in UI’s Integrated Design Lab. His advisor there was Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, who left UI in 2015 to become director of UO’s Energy Studies in Buildings Lab (ESBL). Van Den Wymelenberg will advise Nezamdoost at the UO.

Nezamdoost’s project in the VELUX Award competition was in response to the contest’s challenge to “explore the theme of daylight and to create a deeper understanding of this ever-relevant source of energy, light and life.” The award also encourages contestant’s to consider sociological dimensions of daylight.

The VELUX award makes Nezamdoost eligible for the global VELUX prize, to be selected from winners in each region (Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Middle East, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and Africa).  

The VELUX award is the world’s largest student architecture competition—650 entries from 350 schools in 96 countries—and is organized by the International Union of Architects, the World Architecture Festival, and Architectural Review. The global prize will be awarded in Germany in November. VELUX, a Danish company, specializes in roof windows and skylights.

For SimBuild 2016, Nezamdoost’s award-winning paper documented an eight-year “human factors” study of daylighting in various building types. Daylighting simulation “has become even more important to the design professions than ever before,” states the abstract for his paper, “Sensitivity Study of Annual and Point-in-Time Daylight Performance Metrics: A 24 Space Multi-Year Field Study”. SimBuild is sponsored by ASHRAE, a merger of the American Society of Heating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers.

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