In addressing their sustainability agenda through design and construction, cities are subject to unique challenges, which requires effective exchange of knowledge and subject matter expertise among distributed project teams. At the same time, design and construction projects are dynamic and uncertain, requiring considerable coordination, communication and leadership to execute. Executing such projects in a virtual environment can offer many advantages and facilitate the design efforts. Yet, coordination, communication and leadership become increasingly difficult. This course is designed to acquaint students with issues relating to the collaborative design and leadership of distributed projects in the increasingly global design and construction industry with a specific focus on sustainable design in urban environments.

This year the projects will be an actual site in the city of Atlanta and students will be challenged to share their knowledge of the real project site with their virtual counterparts. Moreover, the teams will need to explicitly consider and model the impact a building retrofit will have on a neighboring building. Students at Georgia Tech will be the subject matter experts and virtual team leaders for a design retrofit team project executed with students from several other universities.