Learning from failure: understanding the anticipated–achieved building energy performance gap

Over the past 20 years a number of studies have identified and provided explanations for a significant ‘performance gap' between designed and actual energy performance of buildings. The anticipated and achieved energy performance of an advanced, innovative building that aspired to net-positive energy performance is studied: the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) building at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Selected performance ‘failures’ that became evident during operation of CIRS are studied for how they were discovered and the efforts required for their resolution: the energy systems and associated controls and monitoring. The key findings show the barriers were neither economic nor technical. Instead, the primary impediments were institutional regimes – arising from the ways that various life-cycle stages were specified, contracted and implemented. The key issues emphasize the importance of having meaningful and effective building energy monitoring capabilities, an understanding of energy system boundaries in design and analysis, crossing the gaps between different stages of a building life cycle, and feedback processes throughout design and operation. The disclosure of ‘failure’ and lessons learned is a valuable contribution to subsequent advancement for the building stakeholders and the wider professional and research communities.     

Exploring the synergy of building massing and façade design through evolutionary optimization

In performance-based architectural design optimization, the design of building massings and façades is commonly separated, which weakens the effectiveness in performance improvement. In response, this study proposes a hybrid massing-façade integrated design generation and optimization workflow to integrate the two elements in an evolutionary design process. Compared with the existing approaches, the proposed workflow emphasizes the diversity of building design generation, with which various combinations of building massing forms and façade patterns can be systematically explored. Two case studies and a corresponding comparison study are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed workflow. Results show that the optimization can produce designs coupling the potential of building massings and façades in performance improvement. In addition, the optimization can provide information that supports early-stage architectural design exploration. Such information also enables the architect to understand the performance implications associated with the synergy of building massing and façade design.     

Fire test data and building design—Some problem areas

Are the methods currently used to classify the combustibility of materials, the fire endurance of structural elements, and the flammability of interior finishes adequate as guide lines in designing fire resistance and fire protection into buildings? The author believes there are some fallacies in strict interpretation of accepted definitions and fire test results. He suggests that more comprehensive reporting of data, based on fire tests reflecting more closely the way materials and assemblies perform under actual fire conditions, would be extremely useful in applying sound fire protection principles in the design of fire-safe buildings.     

Renewal of housing from the 1940s and 1950s from the tenants’ point of view

Taking the ideal of free play in a creative environment as a point of departure, the author examines how this ideal is met in Swedish homes and neighbourhoods. Children's indoor and outdoor activities are described as well as general environmental qualities in different types of housing developments. Housing requirements, neighbourhood improvement programmes and planning practice are outlined. Differences in housing conditions and play patterns according to class are pointed out. The conclusion is that rather than growing up in creative environments, children live on adult premises, meaning environments that are formed and designed according to adult concepts of use, form and content of space. Finally, some ways out of this dilemma are pointed at.     

A spatial Mankiw–Romer–Weil model: theory and evidence

This paper presents a theoretical growth model that extends the Mankiw–Romer–Weil (MRW) model by accounting for technological interdependence among regional economies. Interdependence is assumed to work through spatial externalities caused by disembodied knowledge diffusion. The transition from theory to econometrics leads to a reduced-form empirical spatial Durbin model specification that explains the variation in regional levels of per worker output at steady state. A system of 198 regions across 22 European countries over the period from 1995 to 2004 is used to empirically test the model. Testing is performed by assessing the importance of cross-region technological interdependence and measuring direct and indirect (spillover) effects of the MRW determinants on regional output.     

Modeling occupancy and behavior for better building design and operation—A critical review

People spend more than 90% of their life time in buildings, which makes occupant behavior one of the leading influences of energy consumption in buildings. Occupancy and occupant behavior, which refer to human presence inside buildings and their active interactions with various building system such as lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation, window blinds, and plugs, attract great attention of research with regard to better building design and operation. Due to the stochastic nature of occupant behavior, prior occupancy models vary dramatically in terms of data sampling, spatial and temporal resolution. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the current modeling efforts of occupant behavior, summarizes occupancy models for various applications including building energy performance analysis, building architectural and engineering design, intelligent building operations and building safety design, and presents challenges and areas where future research could be undertaken. In addition, modeling requirement for different applications is analyzed. Furthermore, a few commonly used statistical and data mining models are presented. The purpose of this paper is to provide a modeling reference for future researchers so that a proper method or model can be selected for a specific research purpose.     

Retrofitting with vegetation recent building heritage applying a design tool—the case study of a school building

Several researches show the environmental and microclimatic benefits of the integration of vegetation in architecture; however the potentialities of vertical and horizontal greening systems to retrofit buildings are still not much investigated. The retrofitting project of the Barsanti Institute of Camogli (Genoa, Italy) is presented, a building dated back to the sixties with serious architectural and efficiency problems, located in a considerable landscape area. The development and application of a design tool (process tree), for horizontal and vertical greened surfaces, allows to evaluate the potentialities of vegetation to retrofit and to relate the encountered efficiency problems and the climate characteristics with the choice of plant species, system, and technology more suitable for the specific situation (of which environmental and economic impact are also evaluated) and to define a design approach for the systematic consideration of the many parameters involved.     

Extension planning and the historic city: civic design strategies in the 1908–9 Copenhagen international competition

In shedding light on the 1908–9 competition for Greater Copenhagen this article examines the contest as an instrument for the accumulation and transmission of planning know‐how, ideas and innovations in relation to the development of town planning theory and practice in the Nordic Countries. Plans are considered as both technical and cultural graphics marks reflecting alternative and possibly contradictory images of the greater city or city of the future. The discussion focuses on the relationship between urban design's twin polarities: urban transformation and creation on the one hand; concern for conservation and urban continuity on the other. After considering the competition's international dimension, the article explores the civic art strand of design in northern Europe before 1914 and the idea of the historic city by investigating the conservation movement that flourished in Copenhagen when there were rapid changes in the physical fabric. The article, based on archive materials, analyses of awarded and non‐awarded entries alike, illustrates how architects, engineers and surveyors combined their design of the city's extensions with conservation schemes for both peripheries and centre. It is suggested that, at a time when Nordic municipal authorities were pressing for comprehensive town planning, planners strove to provide ways of protecting the existing built environment. This involved not only safeguarding an emerging ‘historic city’ in contrast to the new extensions, but also proposals for maintaining urban continuity in the peripheries.     

From Egyptian mummies to the Art of Beer: a case study of the Portland Art Museum's engagement strategies,community building,and connection to urban policy, 1994–2014

Urban arts institutions engage communities through their programming, theoretically providing space and impetus for relationship building across and within social groups. However, this discourse does not adequately acknowledge that these institutions are dynamic organizations that are responsive to their environments, social norms, and leadership changes, which impact with which communities they engage. This article uses an analysis of the Portland Art Museum (PAM) between 1994 and 2014 to show that a change over time in its leadership and funding climate has ostensibly led to changes in community building in its urban context. Notably, these changes in engagement strategy mirror changes in urban policy preferences at the time, particularly with respect to arts economic development, as articulated by A. J. Ashley (2015). The findings highlight the significant role that funding environment played in how the art museum programmed and how that programming influenced community building. The research also found a strong correlation between the change in programming strategy of PAM and a change in arts economic development policy norms. However, there was no strong evidence that one explicitly influenced the other, suggesting the need for further investigation.     

Dimension stone for building façades: methodology for structural design

The importance of a careful selection of rocks used in building façade cladding is highlighted. A simple and viable methodology for the structural detailing of dimension stones and the verification of the global performance is presented based on a Strap software simulation. The results obtained proved the applicability of the proposed structural dimensioning methodology which represents an excellent simple tool for dimensioning rock slabs used for building façade cladding. The Strap software satisfactorily simulated the structural conditions of the stone slabs under the studied conditions, allowing the determination of alternative slab dimensions and the verification of the cladding strength at the support.     

The façade fills the frame: the uses and meanings of the elevational view

The camera is set facing a building, whose front is parallel to the picture plane and whose built surface encompasses the visual field: the façade fills the frame. Used since the medium's beginnings, this photographic idiom has become prevalent and distinctive enough to constitute a subgenre. It encompasses work made by a variety of means for a variety of ends, from amateur city snapshots through scrupulous survey work to fine art photography. But perhaps surprisingly, this mode of image-making, in which built fabric is inescapably and pervasively present, does not feature prominently in the standard repertoire of architectural photography. Orthodoxy tends to favour moving out to capture the building in context, moving around to capture three-dimensional form, or moving in to focus on detail. The static elevation view, despite being central to the design and production of architecture, is relatively rare.

In seeking to understand this apparent contradiction, this paper explores the strategies and effects of a number of this subgenre's most notable exponents. For Lee Friedlander, the surfaces of buildings provided complex patterns of reflection, shadow and overlap which, when photographed, served to collapse foreground and background onto a dazzlingly complex picture plane. For Todd Webb, in his New York streetscapes and for Ed Ruscha in his Los Angeles work, façades became flatter, more mute, and the camera's gaze concomitantly more dispassionate. More recently, following Andreas Gursky's seminal Montparnasse image (1993), Stephane Couturier, Michael Wolf and others have produced images which establish an equivalence between their heroic scale and quasi-abstract patterning, and the dystopian arrays of high-rise façades they depict.

Might it in fact be this multiplicity of possible readings and visual stratagems, in which the built facts constituting the picture's content become a point of departure rather than an end in themselves, which militates against the genre's widespread adoption in architectural photography? Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that in such pictures there is nothing but building, they can seem, ultimately, to be about something else.     

A neural network approach to assessing building façade maintainability in the tropics

A model was developed to assess the maintainability of façade using neural network techniques. Inputs were derived from comprehensive studies of 570 tall buildings (more than 12 stories) through detailed field evaluation and interviews with professionals in the whole building delivery process. Sensitivity analysis showed that the most significant factors associated with façade maintainability include the system selection, detailing, accessibility and material performance.     

Carlo Doglio (1914–1995) and the theory and practice of slingshot planning

In 1961 Carlo Doglio (1914–1995) left London, where he had spent the previous six years studying Town Planning (among other things), to join the poet, activist, and social worker Danilo Dolci in leading the development plan of one of the poorest and most marginalized Italian regions: Sicily. Doglio’s actions were guided by a constant dissatisfaction with a model of society that excluded communities from the decision-making process. In Sicily, he saw this as an opportunity to use technical knowledge and experience to achieve a different model of social organization, based on social cooperation and voluntary action. As a militant planner and anarchist, he believed that the planning process had to be structured from the bottom-up in order to offer choices that could be freely discussed and appropriately fulfilled, by the community. Based on original documents from the planner’s archive, this study provides an overview of his work in Sicily, the place where his theories and practices best express his identity as a planner. Although this article offers a detailed examination of Doglio’s work, it also introduces the notion of urban and regional planning as a form of social action and as a means to promote a new form of society, built on pro-active and cooperative communities.     

Production arrangements by US building and non‐building contractors: an update

The paper presents the results of the first phase of a long‐term study that addresses the determinants of the production arrangements by US building (commercial and residential construction) and non‐building contractors (transportation, environmental and industrial construction). Empirical and census data are used to understand the subcontracting and self‐performance practice of the considered contractors. The significant differences in their production arrangements are explained in terms of range of technological requirements and their relative importance within undertaken projects. Building contractors tend to subcontract much of their production, because of the relatively wider range of technological inputs of building projects and liability concerns. On the contrary, non‐building contractors self‐perform much of their production, because of the relatively narrower range of technological inputs of their projects and higher fixed investments in dedicated assets.