Building Design

PurposeOver recent years there has been a significant drive away from traditional procurement routes where contractors find themselves with an increasing responsibility for the control of the design – a process they have had little experience in managing. Yet this is an area of significant opportunity for those contractors who can adapt quickly and effectively to the changing construction market. However, many current processes are insufficient to manage today's demanding and fast‐moving projects. This paper aims to address this issueDesign/methodology/approachThe paper reflects on the deployment of a design management training initiative to improve performance in a major UK civil and building design and construction company. It investigates the impact of the training initiative, critical practices and a suite of 25 tools on design management performance across the company. The methodology included a structured questionnaire, design management maturity assessment, semi‐structure...

Skylights can offer useful benefits in reducing building energy consumption and improving building occupants satisfaction. Skylights may also offer interesting features which increase a building's market value by conveying an aesthetic look to buildings, admitting natural light indoors and connecting building occupants to the outside world. While skylight features are fully exploited, their benefits are still not fully understood and accounted for in currently available computer tools. In fact, research has shown that skylights may result in high-energy consumption if not properly designed. The SkyVision software aims to assist skylight manufacturers and building designers in developing appropriate skylight designs for given buildings and daylighting applications. The software analyses the optical characteristics of various types and shapes of skylights, and calculates their daylighting and energy performance. This paper presents a description of the software and its capabilitie...

The building construction firms have been improved the quality of its activities due to the high market competition and the consumer's demands. In this situation, the design of the different parts of the building, including the product and the production process definitions, is fundamental to improve the costs and the building performance. The external rendering is one of the parts

The planning and management of building design has historically focused upon traditional methods of planning such as Critical Path Method (CPM). Little effort is made to understand the complexities of the design process; instead design managers focus on allocating work packages where the planned output is a set of deliverables. All too often there is no attempt to understand and control the flow of information that gives rise to these deliverables. This paper proposes the combined use of the Analytical Design Planning ...

In India two factors override others by their sheer magnitude:
• a building is the outcome of a handmade craft tradition and not industrial production &
• the majority of the population lives in small towns and villages and builds without architects.
The architecture of Asha & Prabhakar Baste is relevant because it addresses itself to both these issues. Their process of construction forges links with the craftsmen; and their buildings are designed to be prototypes. Their style has a simplicity, rigor, and deductive logic that paves the way for a new vernacular.

(This essay argued for Design/Build at a time when it's acceptance was frowned upon by the Indian Institute of Architects)

Many existing building performance analysis methods and tools do not effectively encourage and facilitate iterative, multi-criteria, and multi-agenda building design development. SEMPER, which was originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), is a building design and performance simulation environment that attempts to remedy these shortcomings. It is an active, multi-domain, space-based, object-oriented design support tool for integrated building performance computing.

ABSTRACT Design strategies that account for local micro-climatic conditions can reduce the overall energy consumption of buildings over its life. This paper evaluates non-structural retrofit strategies for reducing energy consumption for existing buildings. Based on real-life data on usage statistics of buildings and accounting for local climatic conditions, we validate energy consumption predictions by Sefaira® building simulation software. A comparative analysis is then performed for various energy conservation scenarios by estimating energy reduction and payback periods. Our analysis shows that various retrofit strategies can lead to reduction in energy consumption upto 60% with a pay back period of about 9 years.