Simulating Buildings While the Design is Still in the Architect’s Imagination

Decisions made early in the schematic design of buildings can have significant energy impacts that the architect probably did not even consider during the decision-making process. The decision-making process is probably more focused on space locations and overall look of the building than any other criteria. This proposed SBIR project hopes to insert an understanding of the energy impacts into this fluid and flexible part of the design process so that decisions that are made provide for the most energy-efficient buildings as possible. The project will create a web-based simulation system tailored toward architects during this very early stage in the design. Unlike tools such as Sefaira, Revit, or AECOsim, this web-based approach will not require any drawing of the building. Instead, the main inputs will be the size of each type of space in the building. The software will use this information along with the proposed building location and site boundary lines to show a variety of possible configurations and the energy impact of each. Each general configuration will be shown with a variety of measures including daylighting controls, natural ventilation, passive strategies, and a range of space locations within the buildings. The objectives of the proposed Phase I effort are: (1) To develop an initial algorithm and software that takes the architectural planning information and creates detailed building energy model descriptions; and (2) Test if the information provided by the software could provide useful energy information to the architect.