Systems engineering (SE) is a comprehensive and structured approach for analyzing, designing, creating, and operating a system in a cost-effective way. SE concepts are therefore concerned with the overall processes of defining, developing, operating, maintaining, and ultimately replacing quality systems. Whereas the building environmental performance concentrates on the details of individual aspects of building components and equipments (civil, mechanics, electronics, ergonometrics, etc.), SE concept needs to be integrated with all aspects necessary to realize efficient control systems in buildings. To explore this potential, the paper proposes a systems engineering approach for the design of distributed control and building performance simulation by run-time coupling, over TCP/IP protocol suite. In particular, this paper involves a case-study with two important steps; first consists of experiments obtained in TU Delft test-cell in order to demonstrate a potential ability of using advanced control strategies in buildings, and then simulation results are obtained with the run-time coupling mechanism.