Architectural Environment Engineering including an Industrial Year

Architectural environment engineering is a discipline that addresses one of the most pressing challenges facing the built environment: how to design buildings and infrastructure that provide comfortable, productive, and healthy conditions for the people who use them, while minimising the environmental impact of those systems. It brings together building engineering, mechanical and electrical systems design, environmental physics, and sustainability science, with a particular focus on how buildings interact with their thermal, acoustic, and light environments. Graduates in this field design the systems that heat, cool, ventilate, and illuminate buildings, and they model and optimise the environmental performance of the built environment throughout its lifecycle.

At the University of Nottingham, this five-year programme includes a foundation year, which provides additional preparation in the mathematical and scientific foundations of engineering before the main degree begins, and an industrial year, which gives you substantial professional experience in an engineering practice or related environment. The programme also includes a year abroad, broadening your perspective on how architectural environment engineering is practised in different climatic and regulatory contexts.

You will develop expertise in building physics, energy systems, HVAC design, daylighting, acoustics, and the computational modelling tools used to analyse and optimise building performance. The programme is oriented towards the challenge of designing low-energy, sustainable buildings that meet the demands of the net zero transition, one of the most urgent engineering problems of the coming decades.

Graduates from architectural environment engineering programmes work as building services engineers, environmental consultants, energy assessors, sustainable building designers, and researchers across the construction, property, and engineering sectors. Many pursue professional qualifications with the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers or the Chartered Institution of Environmental Health. Postgraduate study in sustainable engineering, building performance, or energy systems is available for those who wish to develop their expertise further.