Enabling Participation in Performance-Driven Architectural Design in the Early Design Stage

Parametric thinking in design has been present in the strategies and design thinking of architects, engineers and design teams even before the emergence of the Computer-Aided parametric tools; architects and engineers take into consideration different parameters related to the context of the designed artifact. With the emergence of Computer-Aided Design tools integrating parametric capabilities, the terms "parametric design", "parametric modelling", "generative design" and "Performance-Driven Design" started to be used to describe particular methods for generation of complex geometries and simulation of the designed and/or built environment. As a common understanding, these terms refer to the process of creating a design proposal based on different input parameters and conditions and answering some defined criteria.As the architecture, engineering and construction industry is getting more complex, the performance of the DBE is getting more attention recently with an important need to produce sustainable environments. While a plethora of simulation tools have enabled the performance analysis of DBE, architects, engineers and design teams have found the opportunity to integrate the quantification of the performance of the DBE into the design process. This is known as the "performance-based design". In addition to these two emerging concepts, "parametric design" and "performance-based design". Performance-Driven Design emerged with a big potential in the AEC industry, thanks to the optimization capabilities integrated in the computer-aided parametric tools. Therefore, the performance analysis through the design process will "drive" and "optimize" the designed artifact.The current approaches to Performance-Driven Design are based on top-down processes driven by the optimization and algorithmic methods, which do not enable the inclusion of non-experts in design. In our research, we criticize the lack of participation and consideration of the human factors in Performance-Driven Design, and particularly the needs and preferences of the end-users considered in this PhD as the future users or inhabitants of the architectural project depending on each case study. The optimization in architectural design aims to accomplish a better building performance, minimizing the damage to our society by answering environmental, acoustical, air quality and other challenges related to the DBE. In parallel to this, we aim to respond to the "social turn" in spatial design which addresses the ways in which the space and the social interactions are constitutive of each other, and how space is produced by the end-users, rather than being external to society. In order to answer this challenge, and understand the capacities, challenges and limitations of performance-driven participatory design, we developed a participatory design process, methods and tools to enable the integration of the "social" into the Performance-Driven Design and tested in three different case studies. Based on the findings from three different cases, we introduced new ways in which the participation of end-users/occupants in the design process can guarantee more satisfactory results in terms of performance. As a result, we found that enabling human data input in Performance-Driven Design can improve the design outcomes to a certain extent by taking end-users' preferences and input into account, but it also has challenges and limitations.

Jaar van publicatie:2020

Toegankelijkheid:Closed