A methodology to assess the constructibility of free-form buildings using building and surface performance indicators: Application to a case study

Abstract

Over many free-form optimizations, studies significantly reduced energy consumption, and all were promising. However, the actual practicality of a free-form building lies in the construction. This study proposes a free-form building search and optimization, and ranking process using building performance indicators such as total incident solar radiation, space-efficiency, and shape-coefficient; and surface performance indicators such as arithmetic average height, root mean square roughness, surface slope, and degree of slope based on surface buildability. The building geometry modelling is done using Grasshopper plug-in in RhinocerosTMand optimization using an add-in for Grasshopper called WallaceiTM. The ranking of Pareto-frontiers is demonstrated using a simple additive weightage method. The results showed that the proposed process could find the ideal solutions by controlling the surface performance indicators based on the proposed objective functions. It is observed that in the arithmetic average height in ideal solutions was 2.45 m and in non-ideal solutions was 6.11 m in the Pareto-front minimizing the total incident solar radiation as promising.