INTEGRATED APPROACH TO ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN PROCESS THROUGH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Preservation of energy resources, occupant comfort and environmental impact limitation are the key issues of modem and sustainable architecture. A multiple-view assessment of building performance at the design stage is therefore essential in order to prevent the delivery of buildings that do not comply with modern constraints. For more than a quarter of a century, building simulation programs have been developed to support non-trivial performance appraisals. In general, these programs deal with a small sub-set of the overall problem. To obtain a global view, solutions that permit stand-alone programs to inter-operate by sharing and exchanging common sets of information have therefore been developed. However, these solutions do not support dynamic information exchange and their complicated data management may lead to result inconsistency. Even if computer technology has rapidly evolved during the last few decades, a satisfactory level of integrated building representation has not been achieved so far, neither horizontally between different views nor vertically between all the processes that occur during the project life span. This thesis presents the developments, implementation and application of an extensive building representation which supports the integrated assessment of building performance. This new development supports various views performance throughout the building life cycle in relation to performance domains such as energy consumption, lighting availability, occupant comfort (thermal, visual), room acoustics and the environmental impacts related to the construction materials and fuel streams over the whole building life span. This thesis is concerned with the integration of simulation into the building design process to give designers a better understanding how design decisions influence the energy and environmental performance of a building, therefore increasing the awareness for these issues during the complex decision making process of the contemporary design process.