Discovering Design Principles for Soft Multi-objective Decision Making

Decision-making tasks sometimes involve soft objectives. They are soft in the sense that they contain uncertainty, imprecision or vagueness. For example, decisions on built environment aim to maximize comfort or other experiential qualities. Pareto-optimal solutions to such problems can be found using multi-objective evolutionary search together...

Project start-up in the architectual design processes

The goal of this paper is to discuss if knowledge from Project Start-Up theory can be of benefit in the initiation of architectural design projects, and if so, which and what form it should take. Previous research showed that Project Start-Up is a method that can improve the result of a project (Halman & Burger, 2001). In our own study we...

The Architectural Information Map: Semantic modeling in conceptual architectural design

This research focuses on the acquisition, representation, sharing and reuse of design information and knowledge in the conceptual phase of architectural design, and targets the creation of situated digital environments where communities of architectural practice communicate and collaborate using this information and knowledge. The utilizable...

The comfort triangles: A new tool for bioclimatic design

This thesis presents a new graphic tool to identify and select bioclimatic strategies according to climate conditions and comfort requirements. The Comfort Triangle relates outdoor daily temperature variations with the modification of thermal performance achieved indoors, using two key variables, average daily temperatures and temperature swings...