PhD award for Mahmoud Elkhatieb
Many congratulations to Mahmoud Elkhatieb, who was awarded his PhD in May 2017. Mahmoud’s thesis was entitled ‘A performance-driven design model of territorial adaptive building skins (TABS) for daylighting performance optimisation in office buildings in Egypt’. TABS are dynamic façade elements that can change their shape, size and orientation in response to prevailing climatic conditions and predetermined internal environmental criteria (such as desirable temperature or lighting level). In his research Mahmoud employed parametric modelling, building performance simulation and Genetic Algorithm tools for optimising the performance of TABS for a south facing office space in Cairo, Egypt. Unusually for this type of complex modelling study, Mahmoud also undertook physical testing of his results by 3D printing some of his intricate façade forms and examining their performance in the artificial sky facility at UCL. Mahmoud has now returned to Egypt to resume his academic career.