This course is offered to students enrolled in the Master of Sustainable Development Program (and other FBE Coursework Masters Degrees or Research Postgraduates - as an elective). The Design Studio is an opportunity for students to acquire and apply the design skills required to integrate environmental issues in architecture. The focus of the studio is the single building or group of buildings, with an emphasis on minimizing the impact of buildings on the global environment, while maintaining environmental quality within the building by using passive or bioclimatic approaches to design. This studio complements others dealing with broader urban and regional scales, offered by the Master of Urban Design and Development (MUDD) program in the Faculty of the Built Environment. On completion of the Studio, students will be able to demonstrate professional level skills in the management and application to design development of advanced computer modelling of energy use, renewable energy, thermal performance, air flow and lighting, and will have undertaken at least some physical scale modelling for analysis and visualization of wind effects, solar penetration and shading, daylighting and acoustic performance. They will be able to prepare compliance reports to support their design work, under one or more sustainability rating frameworks such as Australian Greenhouse Building Rating tool (AGBR) or BASIX, the world's first web-based planning tool designed to assess the water and energy efficiency of new residential developments.