Abstract
Over their whole life cycle, buildings are responsible for high environmental impacts and require critical financial resources. Decisions in the early design phase have a significant impact on both. This study aims to develop a visual decision support tool for architects in order to integrate an environmental and economic life cycle approach for dwellings. To evaluate the environmental impacts of the building design, the tool uses the Belgian LCA method, ‘Environmental Profile of Building Elements’. This method translates 17 environmental indicators in environmental costs by considering the cost to avoid, reduce or compensate the effects to a level that is bearable. The tool allows to combine these life-cycle environmental costs (LCEC) with Life Cycle financial Cost (LCFC). To estimate the operational energy use of the building, the “dynamic Equivalent Heating Degree Day (dEHDD)” method is used. This method allows for fast and relatively accurate heating energy estimations in the early phase, based on a limited number of input data. The tool visualises the results in a graphical way which can be easily understood by architects. Even more, visualisation is seen as a powerful communication tool to share information and ideas with all stakeholders.
Highlights
As the built environment has been well-known as a crucial contributor to climate change [1,2], the 2010 European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) requires EU Member States to improve the energy efficiency of new buildings to achieve the target of nearly Zero Energy Buildings by 2020 [3]
Due to the complexity of life-cycle cost (LCC) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) and the time constraints to consider those aspects in the early design phase, including those aspects, has remained a challenge especially for small scale project like dwellings [6]
This paper proposes a visual design support tool for architects to design a sustainable dwelling based on LCA and LCC approaches
Summary
As the built environment has been well-known as a crucial contributor to climate change [1,2], the 2010 European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) requires EU Member States to improve the energy efficiency of new buildings to achieve the target of nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEBs) by 2020 [3]. Design decisions in the early design stage significantly determine a building’s life-cycle environmental and economic impacts [4,5]. As architects play a crucial role to reach the target, they must be better equipped to estimate influences of their decision on the impacts. In the constant feedback loop of designedly thinking, architects use mainly visual tools [7,8]. This paper proposes a visual design support tool for architects to design a sustainable dwelling based on LCA and LCC approaches.
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