Abstract
This paper uses a combined method – survey and semi-structured interviews – to evaluate the perceived effectiveness of digital design environments for supporting architects’ sustainable design practices. In most contemporary firms, architects’ sustainable design aspirations are reliant on the use digital design tools and associated computational platforms. Past research, however, suggests that a level of uncertainty exists about whether these tools and platforms are sufficient for this purpose. To investigate this issue in an Australian context, architects were invited to take part in an online survey to identify general trends and perceptions, leading to a series of semi-structured interviews, to analyse the issues in detail. The survey results (n = 70) suggest that despite considering sustainable design an important objective in their design practice, participants believe that digital design tools require further development and improvement. Detailed interviews (n = 15) then identified specific factors affecting the usefulness of digital design tools. These results enhance our understanding of Australian architects’ experiences using digital design tools. It also contributes to improving the tools that support sustainable design practices throughout the architectural, engineering and construction industry.
Highlights
Some of the most important mechanisms used to support AEC professionals to design in a sustainable way are software tools and platforms, which are collectively called “digital design environments” (DDEs)
Past research examining DDEs and sustainable design has traditionally focused on technical capacity and accuracy (Peters, 2010)
This paper addresses a research gap associated with the perceived effectiveness of digital design environments for supporting Australian architects’ sustainable design goals
Summary
Research has identified DDE’s low levels of user-friendliness and integration with CAD software (Weytjens & Verbeeck, 2010), lack of capacity for life cycle assessment (Naboni, 2014), and problems associated with early design phases, excessive data-input, poor component libraries (Weytjens & Verbeeck, 2010) Such ineffective aspects of DDEs in relation to sustainable design processes, may result in architects avoiding DDEs completely, or using them selectively and inexpertly during the design process, potentially leading to suboptimal performance of buildings. Questions: Main Themes: 1 What are the main digital tools you are using in your practice? 2 What do you think of current digital tools, in terms of their capacity to support or challenge design thinking and creativity? 3 What do you feel is the extent, of the application of sustainable design principles in current architectural design practice? 4 Is sustainable design currently considered at every scale in your practice, in the projects that your workplace undertakes? If not, what obstacles are currently preventing that? In your experience do clients care about sustainability? 5 What do you think of current digital tools, in terms of their ability to support sustainable design? What do you think are the biggest challenges currently in this area? 6 What do you think about the possible future directions of architectural design for sustainability? 7 Do you predict that computational design tools will play an increasingly large part in the future of sustainable design? Do you think that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) computing, may eventually change the role of architects? 8 What do you think may be the future direction for sustainable design? 9 How could sustainable design principles be more widely applied? 10 Do you think that computational design tools will play a more or less important role in promoting sustainable design?
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
