Optimum Design Framework for Environmental Cost Indicators in Multi Tenant Residential Building Structures

Abstract

Buildings are responsible for 40% of the total global energy use and over 30% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. To minimize environmental impact, building designers are increasingly looking beyond traditional design methods to optimize building designs for low environmental impact. Despite the high variety of environmental impact assessment frameworks a building designer can deploy in their design process nowadays, these frameworks are often only effective when a design is definite. This study aims to determine: 1) what the potential is for an environmental framework that optimizes a building from a prospect instead of a retrospect using generative design methods and 2) what components are required to create such a model. Therefore a framework prototype is designed to optimize a residential building structure for environmental impact. After, the prototype is shown to 20 (student) building designers to find out what they like and dislike about the tool, and what the likeliness is that they will use the tool themselves in their design workflow. The results highlight the prerequisite that problem must be mathematically definable. The first component is that specific data must be available regarding: structural profiles, environmental cost indicators and structural norms. The second component is a mechanism to confirm if the selected elements (columns, beams, floors) meet structural requirements. The third component is the presence of an evolutionary solver to run the fitness simulation. The questionnaire resulted in the majority of the respondents indicating that they think that: 1) the tool adds value to their design workflow, 2) they intend to use the tool in the future and 3) the tool will improve their designs.