An elective graduate architectural design studio has been offered each fall for the past three years that allows students to design buildings with a special emphasis on active and passive thermal control systems. Students enroll in an advanced thermal systems course and a concurrent design studio. The objective of the courses is to allow prospective architects to understand the restraints imposed on their designs by thermal control systems. Students explore alternative architectural designs and simultaneously evaluate the thermal performance of the designs using an hourly energy analysis computer pro. gram. They must develop the detailed quality of their buildings to include consideration for the thermal comfort of the occupants, energy use, and the HVAC system. They actually produce a detailed HVAC system design for one zone of their building as a part of the project. It is the thesis of this course that professionals ultimately resolve complex problems through the design process. The studio presents a reasonable forum to explore HVAC systems in buildings.