Work

The Impact of Architects’ Reasoning on Early Design Decision-Making for Energy-Efficient Buildings

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Architects arguably have the greatest influence on the design of buildings. One of the key factors that make it hard to improve the energy efficiency of buildings is the use of architects’ reasoning by architects at the early design stage. There is a need to assess the impact of architects’ reasoning on the energy performance of the designed building. To this end, this research was conducted in two phases. Firstly, the most influential design parameters, in terms of energy efficiency, were identified and used to develop a design exercise issued to a sample of practising architects in the north of Algeria. Design exercise participants were required to minimise expected energy consumption along with the construction cost. Secondly, computer-generated dynamic design optimisation for the same design task was conducted in DesignBuilder v6. 1 .8. The computer-generated designs decisively outperformed the human-generated designs. The experienced architects achieved the least-performing designs rather than those with less experience.

Source: Sustainability

DOI: 10.3390/su16188220

Authors: Sid Ahmed Ouldja, Peter Demian, Mahroo Eftekhari

Institutions: Birmingham City University, Loughborough University

Language: English

Topic: Building Energy and Comfort Optimization

Subfield: Building and Construction

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Affordable and clean energy

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,728