• Introduction

Innovation institute for Sustainable Maritime Architecture Research and Technology (iSMART) of Qingdao University of Technology (QUT) was founded in Sep. 2018, which possesses the first Chinese academician of the Japanese Engineering Institute, Prof. Weijun Gao as the chief scientist, vice president of QUT, Prof. Dehu Yu as the officer of the center and Prof. Congbao Xu (dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, QUT) as the deputy officer of the center. Prof. Xingtian Wang, as one of the 100 Chinese architectural design masters, joined the iSMART in 2019 to establish a creative Qingdao Architectural Design Center. The center effectively integrates the traditional superior disciplines of QUT such as architectural planning, civil engineering, environmental and mechanical techniques etc. The studies of iSMART are mainly based on “Generalized Architecture”and amied to perfecting “Environmental Architecture”,“Circular Architecture”and “Smart architecture”. Combining with the characteristics and development demand of coastal city, iSMART established a new subject “Marine Architecture”,which aims to develope the critical technologies of green coastal city development.

• Team composition

The main members include 1 foreign academicians of the Japanese Academy of Engineering, 1 national candidates for the project of millions of talents in the new century, 1 candidates for the National “1000 Talents Plan”, and 1 winner of the New Century Outstanding Talents Supporting Plan of the Ministry of Education, 2 young and middle-aged experts with outstanding contributions, 4 talents with special allowances from the national government, 1 prominent educator at the provincial level, and 1 chief expert of Shandong colleges. Furthermore, there are a large number of outstanding young cadremen, 8 people from the National Experimental Center in Berkeley (California, United States), the University of Herewatt (United Kingdom) and other well-known overseas universities. Researchers include 15 regular staff, 15 non-regular staff, 20-30 doctoral postgraduate researchers, and 5-10 well-known experts.

• Development ideas

Technological innovation and breakthrough for the fusion of environment, circulation and smart building under the available condition of coastal environment. The goals of iSMART are based 3 keywords, which are “intellegence”,“livable” and “ecological human settlements”, which include sustainable energy sources, digital architecture, visual monitoring platform, optimization design of energy sources and demonstration project of green coastal city. Based on the aspects that are mentioned above, an evaluation system of coastal marine buildings can be founded for making relevant policies and technical standards.