Early design stage method for making detailed façade decisions.
Building massing and facades play important roles in environmental performance in performance-based architectural design. Façade design involves decisions on window placement, glazing options, shading techniques, and the general orientation of the building and have a big impact on factors like daylighting, passive cooling/heating, and ventilation. The building massing or facade design has also frequently been considered throughout the rapid development of computational design optimisation in order to generate high performing solutions. The two design parts are frequently handled separately, regardless of whether it is a conventional architectural design or one that incorporates computational optimisation. As a result, the two design stages are also split, with the facade design often being scheduled after the final building massing design is decided. The synergy of building massing and facades that might achieve more progressive performance improvement is inexorably undermined by the separation of design processes. To address these shortcomings, the study suggests a hybrid integrated design generation and optimisation workflow that may take building massing and facade design into account during an early-stage design process. An overview of performance-based design optimisation applications for the design of building massing and facades is given before the work of this study is presented to highlight the research gap.
