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Managing design : conversations, project controls and best practices for commercial design and construction projects
\"For many years the way the design process was managed in the commercial design and construction industry was a topic of great interest to academics and a small cadre of professionals who were early adopters of new project delivery methods. The issue has now burst into the mainstream as the pace of change has quickened the industry's transformation to team-approach design and construction. Through candid interviews with 40 industry luminaries and a set of actionable tools and best practices, the book helps readers do the impossible : manage design. Written in a relatable style this book is a welcome lever for owners, contractors, and designers in search of better ways to work together\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Breaking-down building design problems with decomposition approaches: A review
•Examining the role of decomposition in building design.•Evaluating the applicability of decomposition approaches for different design problems.•Conducting a comparative performance analysis of decomposition approaches.•Providing clear guidelines for effective and efficient application.•Identifying the criteria and challenges in implementing decomposition.
Decomposition simplifies complex building design problems by breaking them into smaller, manageable subproblems, enabling structured and efficient optimization. While widely used in systems engineering, its application in building design remains underexplored due to inconsistent definitions and a lack of structured guidelines. This review systematically examines decomposition approaches in early-stage building design optimization, primarily focusing on energy and emission performances. The study first characterizes single-level building design optimization problems and underscores the importance of decomposition. It then analyzes decomposition mechanisms, focusing on four hierarchical approaches: Sequential, Iterative, Nested, and Partitioned, along with a structured guideline outlining their key implementation criteria and challenges. Findings demonstrate that decomposition reduces computational effort while maintaining solution accuracy and enhances automation. This review highlights how decomposition improves design flexibility and supports the integration of operational performance in the early building design stages. The practical guideline enables key stakeholders to improve collaboration and facilitate a more informed decision-making process.
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Journal Article
Coherent Investigation on a Smart Kinetic Wooden Façade Based on Material Passport Concepts and Environmental Profile Inquiry
Wood is one of the most fully renewable building materials, so wood instead of non-renewable materials produced from organic energy sources significantly reduces the environmental impact. Construction products can be replenished at the end of their working life and their elements and components deconstructed in a closed-loop manner to act as a material for potential construction. Materials passports (MPs) are instruments for incorporating circular economy principles (CEP) into structures. Material passports (MPs) consider all the building’s life cycle (BLC) steps to ensure that it can be reused and transformed several times. The number of reuse times and the operating life of the commodity greatly influence the environmental effects incorporated. For a new generation of buildings, the developing of an elegant kinetic wooden façade has become a necessity. It represents a multidisciplinary region with different climatic, fiscal, constructional materials, equipment, and programs, and ecology-influencing design processes and decisions. Based on an overview of the material’s environmental profile (MEP) and material passport (MP) definition in the design phase, this article attempts to establish and formulate an analytical analysis of the wood selection process used to produce a kinetic façade. The paper will analyze the importance of environmentally sustainable construction and a harmonious architectural environment to reduce harmful human intervention on the environment. It will examine the use of wooden panels on buildings’ façades as one solution to building impact on the environment. It will show the features of the formation of the wooden exterior of the building. It will also examine modern architecture that enters into a dialogue with the environment, giving unique flexibility to adapt a building. The study finds that new buildings can be easily created today. The concept of building materials passport and the environmental selection of the kinetic wooden façade can be incorporated into the building design process. This will improve the economic and environmental impact of the building on human life.
Journal Article
Exploring the Effects of Climate-Adaptive Building Shells: An Applicative Time-Saving Algorithm on a Case Study in Bologna, Italy
Adaptive façades represent a viable and effective technological solution to reduce the building energy demand for cooling while achieving interesting aesthetic effects on the building envelope to screen solar radiation. During the last decade, many different design solutions, including those based on shape memory alloys, have been experimented to obtain appropriate responses without being dependent on electro-mechanically actuated systems. Several recent and ongoing studies have been published in the scientific literature regarding the different actuator typologies, as well as the different properties of the materials used, which usually determine the adaptive solution characteristics after a series of complex and time-consuming simulations using specialised dynamic modelling software. Due to the time and resources required, this kind of evaluation is usually delivered during the last and more advanced design stage as a form of assessment of already-taken architectural and technological choices. The study reported in the paper aims to offer a quick, time-saving simplified algorithm to calculate the response of an adaptive façade, according to the ISO 13790 standards, to be adopted during the early design stage to evaluate the possible effects of design decisions. The study includes three main steps: (a) the conceptualisation of the adaptive solution considering the context conditions; (b) the definition of the calculation algorithm; (c) the application of the method to a test room in a case study building located in Bologna for supporting the discussion of the related outcomes.
Journal Article
Implications for Design
This chapter explores the characteristics of how the building design process needs to change. It is clear that there are significant differences to the design process if a circular system that values used resources is a goal. By proposing a building made from materials at hand, the project introduces an entirely new paradigm for a project delivery process that has not changed substantially in the last fifty years. It radically alters the way a building is both conceived and made: form follows availability. Clients with a large portfolio of buildings may have several construction projects planned or in progress. One project may generate a stock of discarded elements that could be fed into other projects. In particular, interior elements of fit out projects can be reused in this way. Performance is often mentioned as a concern or barrier to reuse. The chapter discusses various aspects of performance.
Book Chapter
Radio Measurements
This chapter outlines the main characteristics of narrowband and wideband radio measurements often employed in indoor wireless communications. Radio measurements are therefore an essential ingredient of the overall in‐building design process. The chapter describes the value of measurements for in‐building design projects, and presents different types of in‐building measurement systems and their characteristics. It then recognizes the impact of inaccuracies while performing measurements, and provides various guidelines and recommendations for in‐building testing. The chapter presents a brief overview of equipment for in‐building measurements, discussing some technical details of relevant components and equipment, such as transmitters, receivers, feeders and antennas. It discusses the role of having a well‐documented measurement campaign, especially when postanalysis of the collected data is to be performed. Finally, the chapter presents tips and tricks for effective measurements, along with some walk route guidelines and recommendations.
Book Chapter
Environmental Psychology
This chapter contains sections titled:
The Distinctiveness of Environmental Psychology
Theoretical Bases
Environmental Perception and Spatial Cognition
Managing Social Space
Encouraging Proenvironmental Behavior
The Psychology of Resource Management
Residential Environmental Psychology
The Environmental Psychology of Neighborhoods and Cities
Educational Environmental Psychology
Workplace Environmental Psychology
Natural Environmental Psychology
The Social Construction of Nature, the Environment, and Environmental Problems
Environmental Psychology and Architectural Design
Information and Communication Technologies and Environments
Conclusion ‐ Changing Contexts, Horizons, and Challenges
References
Book Chapter
LCA in architectural design—a parametric approach
Purpose
Life cycle assessment (LCA) has not been widely applied in the building design process because it is perceived to be complex and time-consuming. There is a high demand for simplified approaches that architects can use without detailed knowledge of LCA. This paper presents a parametric LCA approach, which allows architects to efficiently reduce the environmental impact of building designs.
Methods
First, the requirements for design-integrated LCA are analyzed. Then, assumptions to simplify the required data input are made and a parametric model is established. The model parametrizes all input, including building geometry, materials, and boundary conditions, and calculates the LCA in real time. The parametric approach possesses the advantage that input parameters can be adjusted easily and quickly. The architect has two options to improve the design: either through manually changing geometry, building materials, and building services, or through the use of an optimization solver. The parametric model was implemented in a parametric design software and applied using two cases: (a) the design of a new multi-residential building, and (b) retrofitting of a single-family house.
Results and discussion
We have successfully demonstrated the capability of the approach to find a solution with minimum environmental impact for both examples. In the first example, the parametric method is used to manually compare geometric design variants. The LCA is calculated based on assumptions for materials and building services. In the second example, evolutionary algorithms are employed to find the optimum combination of insulation material, heating system, and windows for retrofitting. We find that there is not one optimum insulation thickness, but many optima, depending on the individual boundary conditions and the chosen environmental indicator.
Conclusions
By incorporating a simplified LCA into the design process, the additional effort of performing LCA is minimized. The parametric approach allows the architect to focus on his main task of designing the building and finally makes LCA practically useful for design optimization. In the future, further performance analysis capabilities such as life cycle costing can also be integrated.
Journal Article
Using Artificial Intelligence to Generate Master-Quality Architectural Designs from Text Descriptions
The exceptional architecture designed by master architects is a shared treasure of humanity, which embodies their design skills and concepts not possessed by common architectural designers. To help ordinary designers improve the design quality, we propose a new artificial intelligence (AI) method for generative architectural design, which generates designs with specified styles and master architect quality through a diffusion model based on textual prompts of the design requirements. Compared to conventional methods dependent on heavy intellectual labor for innovative design and drawing, the proposed method substantially enhances the creativity and efficiency of the design process. It overcomes the problem of specified style difficulties in generating high-quality designs in traditional diffusion models. The research results indicated that: (1) the proposed method efficiently provides designers with diverse architectural designs; (2) new designs upon easily altered text prompts; (3) high scalability for designers to fine-tune it for applications in other design domains; and (4) an optimized architectural design workflow.
Journal Article
Optimization-based design exploration of building massing typologies—EvoMass and a typology-oriented computational design optimization method for early-stage performance-based building massing design
In the past decade, there has been an increasing recognition of the role of computational design optimization in early-stage performance-based architectural design exploration. However, it remains challenging for designers to apply such optimization-based design explorations in practice. To address this issue, this paper introduces a design tool, called EvoMass, and an associated design method that facilitates design exploration for building massing typologies in performance-based design tasks. EvoMass is capable of offering architects design options reflecting performance-related building massing typologies for the design task, without necessitating advanced computational design skills. More importantly, it can provide architects with insights into the underlying performance implications, thereby enhancing early-stage performance-based design exploration. EvoMass and its associated design method overcome the limitation in the conventional typology-first-optimization-second design procedure adopted by most existing tools, and it promotes a typology-oriented design exploration method of using computational optimization in performance-based architectural design. To demonstrate the efficacy of EvoMass, case studies derived from architectural design studio tasks, incorporating daylighting, solar exposure, and subjective design intents, and the result of a user survey are presented, which highlights how EvoMass and the performance-based design optimization and exploration can enable architects to achieve a more performance-aware design.
Journal Article