Sustainability, eco friendly, and green are hot terms that architects, designers, and design enthusiasts are constantly throwning around in casual conversations throughout coffee shops in almost every city. As a graduate student in the field of architecture I am constantly seeing how professors are pushing these ideas of sustainability on to their students. They are pushing them to think green, to believe in green, and to design green. This can be seen throughout many architecture and design campus throughout the world. But in my opinion (though I may be wrong) we are not taught how to justify our decisions in regards to sustainability. We as students sometimes add skylights, double facades, low-e glass, shading devices, and sometimes even photovoltaic panels to our design projects. But how do we know if these design decisions are even the right ones? How do we validate our decisions?
Performance based design | performance guides design decisions
In the last decade or so there has been a large increase in tools used to predict how buildings will perform.These tools can be used to measure and validate the decisions we make. There are tools to measure energy, light, acoustics, structures, comfort, as well as tools to measure air flow. The use of these and other similiar type of tools can help us as designers potentially make the right decisions or at least point us in the right direction. Building simulation tools are key in the development and advancement of high performance design. I strongly believe that as a student of architecture and future architect that high performance should be the aim of every design project. High performance is not about performing designs well, but about designs that perform well.
In this blog I will be investigating these types of tools as well as strategies and technologies that could be implemented into the process of design in order to achieve our goal of high performance.
[ Developing high performance architecture without jeopardizing design intent | vision.]