Architectural Design: Sustainability in the Decision-Making Process

Case of study on a sustainability building: Environmental risk assessment related with allergenicity from air quality considering meteorological and urban green infrastructure data on BIM

Digitisation is gaining importance with 3D workflow for architecture-specific annotation of built heritage. The objective is to use the Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology in order to carry out a study of alternatives of impact on environmental sustainability associated with the potential allergenicity with green infrastructure on a new housing, located in Mérida (SW Spain). It is intended to simulate the meteorology (direction and speed of the wind) in the study city with the compass rose for 18 years (2003-2020) to assess the meteorological pattern associated with the wind on the studied housing. 3 green infrastructure garden alternatives (considering 5 ornamental species of cypress trees) were designed to evaluate the potential impact of allergenicity on the housing. AIROT index was applied to project the results on the frontage of the housing. This index was developed in the field of large areas of urban environments. The calculation was carried out in the most exact way possible in specific sections of the frontage of the housing and automatically with tools associated with the BIM environment (such as Autodesk Revit, Dynamo, Enscape, Wrplot and Bim One) to the discipline of Architecture (such as Autodesk Autocad and Autodesk Flow Design). The obtained results were applied to evaluate 3 scenario designs, trying to minimize the potential exposure to urban green infrastructure (focus on cypress trees) in this current project, and offering a health reference guide in future projects, from the design phase considering appropriate measures and proposing recommendations.

Passive and Active Solar Systems in Eco-Architecture and Eco-Urban Planning

The subject of this article is a presentation of multi-scale passive and active solar and shading systems in urban areas. This research assumes the hypothesis that insolation systems are interdependent and that their integration in urbanized space affects the city biome. Attention has been paid to the role of innovative solutions used in the field of ur ban insolation, such as heliostats in the development of future eco-architecture and eco-urban planning. This research has been based on the assumption that only by taking into account the close symbiosis between an energy-efficient building and its appropriate insolation, in combination with properly planned surroundings, it is possible to actually achieve the principles of sustainable development in the urban fabric. The analytical part concerns detailed investigation into solutions in the field of passive and active solar architecture and urban planning, regarding both insolation and shading. The article analyzes source materials, includes descriptions of case studies, and presents a comparative analysis of passive and active solar and shading systems. The research method, both empirically and theoretically, is closely related to case study analysis and has involved collecting and systematizing data on micro and macro “solar” design systems.

Architectural Education in the Current of Deep Ecology and Sustainability

As a result of the experience and scientific research of the authors on the deep ecology and sustainability process, academic courses were created that are run at two stages of educating architecture students. The authors aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness and quality of the courses as well as the rationality of the assumptions and educational methods adopted for their implementation. One of them was the survey method, as a didactic and scientific experiment and didactic tool. The innovative educational methodology presented in the work may be implemented by other educators at architectural universities in order to improve the quality of teaching design in the spirit of pro-ecological and sustainable development. The result is a long-term action which constitutes a tool to combat the ecological crisis. It consists of bottom-up activities, both in the open landscape (ecovillages) and in the urban context (housing complexes with elements of urban farms and environmental education parks). This is connected with the application of the educational system from the pre-school level in the place of residence up to in-depth academic education.

Assessing the Sustainability of Alternative Structural Solutions of a Building: A Case Study

The implementation of sustainable solutions in the design of buildings is one of the main elements in achieving the transition to sustainability. The variety of structural elements and availability of sustainable materials, and the different preferences of clients, architects, and structural designers make the decision-making process difficult. This research aims to develop a decision model for applying to the early design stage. This work evaluates the sustainability of the load-bearing structures of a commercial building. Three types of load-bearing structures have been selected and compared concerning different physical parameters, cost of construction, cost of materials, technological dimensions (duration expressed in person-hours and machine-hours), and environmental impact. The methodology combines the building information modeling, sustainability criteria, and multi-criteria decision-aiding methods. The presented case study illustrates the proposed approach. The study revealed that multi-criteria decision aiding methods give the possibility to improve the selection process and to assess the sustainability of alternative structural solutions at an early stage of building design. The proposed decision model is versatile and therefore can be applied for different cases.