A review and outlook for a ‘Building Information Model’ (BIM): A multi-standpoint framework for technological development

Nowadays, debates addressing climate change, fossil fuels depletion and energy security highlight the need for a more sustainable built environment in order to reduce energy consumption and emission trends in the buildings sector. Meeting these targets is a challenge that calls for innovative research to improve the use of renewable energy sources, new technologies, and holistic tools and methodologies. Such research should integrate the dynamics and main drivers of energy supply and demand in buildings to support new policies, plans and actions towards lowering the built environment burdens. This paper brings together ten research topics concerning the energy and environmental performance of buildings, which can support a shift towards a more sustainable built environment. Background information and state of the art literature on the covered research topics is briefly summarized, gaps are identified and guidelines for future research are provided. The selected topics cover different stages along the lifetime of buildings (from design and operation, to retrofitting and end-of-life), different scale approaches (from building elements/components, to the building, district and urban scales), and different methods to assess the energy and environmental performance of buildings (life-cycle assessment, generative design methods and retrofitting tools). Other topics are discussed such as: nearly zero-energy buildings, the control of domestic energy resources in smart grid scenarios, the need to include end-users' behaviors in the dynamics of energy demand, the advantages of improving thermal storage by using phase change materials, the importance of reducing heating and cooling energy demand (maintaining indoor thermal comfort), and the optimization of heating and cooling fluids, and their system control.

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A review on current advances in the energy and environmental performance of buildings towards a more sustainable built environment

The drafting of floor plans is mostly hand made in today's architectural design process. The use of computerized floor planning techniques may enhance the practitioner's range of solutions and expedite the design process. However, despite the research work that has been carried out, the results obtained from these techniques do not convince many practitioners to accept them as part of their design methods. The existing literature shows that every research approach is different in the way in which architectural space planning is tackled. Consequently, each approach tends to be too specific or too abstract. The Space Allocation Problem in architecture may be stated as the process of determining the position and size of several rooms and openings according to the user's specified design program requirements, and topological and geometric constraints in a two-dimensional space. This is the first part of a paper that describes an enhanced hybrid evolutionary computation scheme that couples an Evolutionary Strategy (ES) with a Stochastic Hill Climbing (SHC) technique to generate a set of floor plans to be used in the early design stages of architectural practice. It presents the mathematical model with the problem statement and how the individuals' fitness is computed, the implemented methodological approach, how the adaptive operators are implemented, the summary of the overall procedure, and conclusions.

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An evolutionary strategy enhanced with a local search technique for the space allocation problem in architecture, Part 1: Methodology

Fostering collaboration in the AEC (Architecture/Engineering/Construction) field is difficult, due to the differing educational and disciplinary backgrounds of the participants. Current approaches to managing such collaboration in the AEC industry often fail to overcome the disciplinary differences among the participants, resulting in cost overruns, missed schedules, and diminished satisfaction of the clients or society. Their failure is due to the lack of understanding of the nature of multi-disciplinary design and the lack of tools that can support them. The primary objective of this research is to establish a suitable model for machine-mediated collaboration. In contrast to the monolithic model, which is insensitive to changes, we propose to develop a distributed and flexible model, where each domain of expertise retains its own data in the form most appropriate for its needs, and where ontology-based, intelligent filters translate neutral design data into domain-specific ones. The filtered data appear semantically-rich to the participant, even when it was generated by another participant. To verify the feasibility of the proposed filter-based communication model, we developed and tested a prototype. The result of the prototype test demonstrates that the proposed model can enable designers from different disciplines participating in an AEC project to better understand the dynamic process of design and achieve a high level of shared understanding.

User-centric knowledge representations based on ontology for AEC design collaboration

The use of ICT has over the years in different ways influenced and to a certain degree also changed roles and processes within the building project. A better understanding and overview of how ICT affect on the complex mechanisms within the early stages of the planning process can be seen as central to achieve project success. This paper presents a framework for exploring the ICT impacts on the architectural design process, focusing on ICT benefits and challenges regarding four essential design process aspects: the generation of design solutions, the communication, the evaluation of design solutions and the decision-making. The framework is founded on the suggestion of three hierarchical building project levels, the micro (individual)-, meso (group)- and macro (overall)-level. Several benefits and challenges of ICT regarding the four architectural design process aspects are explored and the outline of an ICT impact matrix summarizes the key points of the exploration. Furthermore, the paper gives an example of how the framework could be applied to a real-life project for supporting the exploration of how ICT impact on the architectural design process in practice.

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A framework for exploring the ICT impact on the architectural design process

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Architecture’s New Media:Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design

Italian religious architecture of the late Cinquecento is marked by an innovative interpretation of the canon of the central plan that generates a new type of Baroque church: the elongated central space. By building oval churches covered with oval domes, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola (1507–1573) introduced a new pattern into the architectural shape grammar. The geometry of the oval figure gracefully combines the theoretical concept of cosmic centrality and the pragmatic necessities of liturgical linearity. However it raises a number of design problems for which architects devised various and inventive solutions. The comparison of various churches dating back to no later than the end of the Seicento, highlights the diversity of all the projects. Although every church is unique in its layout, design, features and decoration, all oval churches propose similar challenges to their designer, the most important of which are the choice of the geometrical pattern, the dome, and the facade.

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Baroque Oval Churches: Innovative Geometrical Patterns in Early Modern Sacred Architecture

Leonardo’s mathematical notes bear witness to a work in progress and allow us to look directly into the mind of the writer. In Leonardo we find two of the three fundamental classical geometric problems: the duplication of the cube and the quadrature of the circle. While Leonardo is extremely familiar with two-dimensional geometry problems, and proposes playful graphic exercises of adding and subtracting polygonal surfaces of all kinds, he is still unable to solve the problem of the duplication of the cube. Numerous pages testify of the attempt to rise above planar geometry and reach the realm of the third dimension, but Leonardo always bumps against the limits of quantity calculation possibilities of his age.

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Leonardo and Theoretical Mathematics

In order to understand how the new typological pattern for amphitheaters was first drawn, and how it was transformed into a variety of archetypal models during its historical evolution, measured surveys were made of the amphitheaters of Pompeii, Roselle, and Veleia. The analysis of their curves evidences three different geometric diagrams deriving from three different answers to the same query. The design of amphitheaters involves two of the classic problems of ancient mathematics: the quadrature of the circle and the trisection of the angle. The curve of the outer perimeter has to be approximated by an irregular polygon in order to determine the position of the vertices from which the stairs would come down the steps of the cavea, dividing it into wedge-shapes of more or less identical size. Aesthetic demands and arithmetic necessities had to converge toward coherent and scientific geometric patterns. One of these would later be called “the perfect oval” by the architects of the Renaissance.

Architecture and Mathematics in Roman Amphitheatres

The purpose of research in ancient architecture, or ancient urban design, is usually to unveil a hidden theoretical knowledge, or at least an intentional geometric and/or arithmetic order. This knowledge may be proved either by using the same procedures that ancient designers probably used themselves: diagrams drawn with some kind of manual graphical device, or applying modern procedures provided by contemporary mathematics.
The two approaches may be combined in the same study in order to allow scholars to reach more reliable conclusions. Using techniques from computer science it is possible to carry out a more precise and less subjective analysis of shapes and dimensions, which may also reveal the surprising accuracy with which ancient monuments were designed and laid out. In addition to such an investigation, a simultaneous inquiry on ancient relationships between mathematics and architecture will make possible the verification of the assertions proposed, and will allow us to understand how geometrical shapes could be practically drawn and transformed in architectural forms in the context of the contemporary scientific and cultural knowledge.
The present study demonstrates the complementarity of the two methodologies - analysis with modern digital tools, and classical simulation with ancient tools - in the case study of roman amphitheatres. The geometrical analysis and the arithmetical analysis both converge to the same conclusion. Furthermore they corroborate the conclusions suggested by the numerical analysis with modern mathematics (i.e., the manipulation of computer science). Therefore, the coherence of the results coming from our different approaches allows us to assert that the geometrical pattern of Pompeii's amphitheatre is a rare example of elliptic shape in architecture. Furthermore, its geometry and dimensions also show some of the finest evidence of direct application of the latest discoveries in mathematical knowledge and science in architectural design in classic antiquity.

Sylvie Duvernoy

Papers

Architecture’s New Media:Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design

Baroque Oval Churches: Innovative Geometrical Patterns in Early Modern Sacred Architecture

Leonardo and Theoretical Mathematics

Architecture and Mathematics in Roman Amphitheatres

The Compass, the Ruler and the Computer