Research Journal: Vol. 10.02

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research journal

10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

2018 / VOL 10.02

RESEARCH JOURNAL 2018 / VOL 10.02

Editors:

Ajla Aksamija, PhD, LEED AP BD+C, CDT and Kalpana Kuttaiah, Associate AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Journal Design & Layout:

Kalpana Kuttaiah, Associate AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Cover Design:

Tim Pettigrew, LEED Green Associate

Acknowledgements:

We would like to extend our APPRECIATION to everyone who contributed to the research work and articles published within this journal.

Perkins and Will is an interdisciplinary design practice offering services in the areas of Architecture, Interior Design, Branded Environments, Planning + Strategies and Urban Design. https://perkinswill.com/research Copyright 2018 Perkins and Will All rights reserved.

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PERKINS AND WILL RESEARCH JOURNAL: 10-Year Celebratory Issue Ten years ago, we set out on an audacious adventure. We believed that the uncommon synthesis of curiosity, rigor, and transparency would define a new type of design research. Springing out of this dynamic fusion, our Research Journal instantly became a vibrant and permanent fixture in our intellectual and professional lives, and today we celebrate its tenth anniversary.

In the last decade, 130 curious minds from around our firm have researched, written, and published more than 90 articles. Around 200 reviewers have read and analyzed these articles to ensure their integrity and authenticity. Each issue of the Journal addresses topics that are timely, relevant, and practical; everyone who reads an article learns something new or feels newly inspired. What’s more, the Journal builds strong relationships between researchers and design practitioners—the key to a genuinely research-informed design practice.

Ten years of the Perkins and Will Research Journal is certainly a milestone worth celebrating. But the discoveries we’re making—and the insights we’re gleaning—are only just beginning to transform the design profession through real-world application. After all, design projects can take decades to complete, and they often require even more time after that to measure and evaluate their performance. To truly effect positive change in our field, we can never stop asking questions, and we can never stop pursuing the answers.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Perkins and Will Research Journal is the transparency with which it is prepared and the humility with which it is shared. At Perkins and Will, we are committed to the idea that opensource knowledge makes a better world. As a matter of fact, if you happen to find something within these pages that intrigues you—and I’m confident you will—the only thing I ask is that you share what you’ve learned with someone else.

Stay curious,

Phil Harrison, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C Chief Executive Officer

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PREFACE: 10-Year Celebratory Issue I started at Perkins and Will ten years ago, exactly one month before the first Perkins and Will Research Journal was published. For more than fifteen years leading up to that day, I had been straddling the line between practice and academia, wondering if there was some way to more fully integrate the two seemingly divergent worlds. Little did I know that Ajla and Kalpana were already far ahead of me and, in fact, far ahead of the rest of the profession. They were creating a research platform inside a professional practice. It was transformational.

Today the design professions still struggle to understand the nature of research in our work. There is a systemic lack of clarity in defining research in design, which is not prevalent in most other professions or areas of scientific investigation. Medicine, sociology, biology, etc., all share something that we do not: a strong consensus around methodologies and protocols for the research process itself. They have platforms for research and development that we lack.

And this is why the Perkins and Will Research Journal is so important and transformational. Unlike the imprecise and soft research that permeates most efforts, our journals follow rigorous procedures, are externally peer reviewed, and provide cogent outputs.

As designers, we are taught that original thinking, uniqueness, and our gut feelings are things to be celebrated, but these can be antithetical to the dispassion needed in scientific research. These investigations, after all, are not necessarily supposed to give us answers; rather they tell us how to explore, probe, and examine myriad issues. And they provide rules that we follow to ensure that outcomes are both valid and usable across disciplines.

I cannot overstate how much richer our professions are because Perkins and Will has developed a research journal that is organized not around a single subject; but around a consistent protocol and platform that results in significant additions to the body of knowledge within the design disciplines.

Ajla, Kalpana, and all those that have helped in this effort should take a moment and contemplate this achievement. It is something for which we should all be very proud.

David Green, AIA, LEED AP BD+C Global Practice Leader, Urban Design

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EDITORIAL This issue of Perkins and Will Research Journal is a celebratory 20th issue, which marks the publication’s 10 year anniversary—a significant milestone for the firm and the design profession.

As one of the first peer-reviewed research journals coming from the architecture and design industry, the publication has made a significant impact on our profession over the last decade. It has established a mechanism for documenting and sharing high-quality, peer-reviewed research from practice associated with the built environment, and has initiated a culture of research transparency within the design profession.

The challenges that are facing the design profession today are multi-faceted, and only through dedicated research we can address and find solutions to environmental, social, technological, economic and cultural problems facing our profession. A crucial step in any research project is documentation of the research process, and objective dissemination of results. Through this journal, we have established a method for collecting, reviewing, and reporting results of rigorous research studies, aiming to find solutions to challenges that are affecting the entire design profession. And, through publicly sharing the results, we have opened up a new era for practice-based design research and initiated a culture of innovation in our profession, where transparency plays a key role.

Over the last decade, we have published 95 articles, written by 136 authors, and peer reviewed by 180 research experts from academic institutions, research organizations, public agencies, and private entities. The articles focused on diverse research subjects, including sustainable and energy-efficient design, building performance, advanced building technologies, computational design techniques, economic impacts, professional practice and delivery, impacts of climate change on the built environment, building materials, digital fabrication, and many other topics. The investigated building typologies also covered a large spectrum of different building types, including healthcare facilities, higher education buildings, schools, workplaces, residential buildings, research laboratories, mixed-use buildings, museums and commercial buildings. The research methods covered a wide array of research processes, including literature reviews, case studies, simulations and modeling, experimental studies, qualitative studies, and mixed research methods.

These articles represent different disciplines within the design of the built environment, including architecture, urban design and transportation, landscape design, building systems and engineering, interiors, planning and programming, and often reported results of multidisciplinary research projects. These articles have been primarily written by Perkins and Will employees, but also include collaborative articles written with co-authors from many different academic institutions, other firms, consultants and clients.

We have also published three special issues over the last ten years.

The first special issue was published in 2013, dedicated to documenting the outcomes of the 2nd Workshop on Architecture and Engineering of Sustainable Buildings, organized by the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and Perkins and Will, and sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

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The second special issue was published in 2014, and was dedicated to capturing some of the results of the Perkins and Will’s Innovation Incubator program. The program initiated in 2010 as a micro-grant research program for Perkins and Will employees to support the culture of innovation through small, focused, fast-paced investigative projects.

The third special issue was published in 2015, dedicated to the Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) 2015 Conference. The conference was organized by Perkins and Will, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with the theme “Future of Architectural Research.� This was the first time that the design practice and academic institutions were collaborating and organizing a conference dedicated to architectural research. The intention was to bring together researchers, design practitioners, faculty members, policy makers, educators, and students to discuss the latest achievements in architectural research and to bridge the gap between academic and practice-led research efforts.

Beyond research results being implemented on specific design projects and to support decision-making within the firm, the studies and their results have found uses within other contexts as well over the past decade. For example, the wider design community benefits from this publication, and research results are also used by other architectural design firms. Professional organizations have used the journal to improve the knowledge base, and provide relevant, peer-reviewed research to all stakeholders involved in creating the built environment (designers, architects, engineers, building owners, builders, policy makers, and planners). Researchers have used the results to extend the studies and in their own research, and the articles published in this journal are often cited in other journals. The academic institutions are using this journal in their curriculum, and results are used to educate the next generation of designers, architects, planners, and researchers. Most importantly, this journal has created a precedent for high quality, rigorous research coming from the design profession, which we feel should be shared to influence and shape the future of the built environment.

Creating new knowledge through research and development can bring immense value to any organization for which innovation is important. But, sharing the results creates a value for the entire industry and society. Building an industry-wide culture of innovation piece by piece, and fully infusing innovation into the design profession can help us address any challenges that the future might bring. With this journal, we have shared results of numerous research studies during the last decade, and will continue to help build an industry-wide culture of research and innovation in the future.

Ajla Aksamija PhD, LEED AP BD+C, CDT

Kalpana Kuttaiah Associate AIA, LEED AP BD+C

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1. Energy-Related Occupant Behavior Schedule: Rethinking the Occupant Schedule in Energy Simulations 2. Integration of Parametric Design Methods and Building Performance Simulations for High-Performance Buildings: Methods and Tools 3. Spatial and Motivational Programming in Office Environments: Comparison of Co-Working to Other Types of Commercial Spaces

PREVIOUS ISSUES https://perkinswill.com/research

Vol. 10.01 / 2018

Vol. 09.02 / 2017

1.` Activating The Workplace: The Impact of Active Workstations on Employee Effectiveness 2. Material Health and Transparency: Methods for Improved Integration with Design Process 3. Outside In: Influences of Indoor Plants on Psychological Well-Being and Memory Task Performance in a Workplace Setting 4. Learning Through Osmosis: A Report on the Seattle Mentorship Program’s Pilot Session

1. Natural Harmony: Designing with Thermal Actuators 2. Patient-Population Based Design: A Wellness Approach for Designing Healthcare Environments 3. A protectED Roon: Design of Responsive and Acuity Adaptable Behavioral Health Room for Emergency Departments 4. Comparing and Adapting Pitt River School to the Passive House Standard

Vol. 09.01 / 2017

1. Health Indicator Mapping: A Methodology for Visualizing Community Health 2. Automated Robotic Fabrication for Temporary Architecture: Rethinking Plastics 3. Crafting Architectural Experiences: Exploring Memory Places 4. Climate Change and Performance of Facade Systems: Analysis of Thermal Behavior and Energy Consumption in Different Climate Types

Vol. 08.02 / 2016

Vol. 07.02 / 2015

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1. Weathering the Storm: Mental Health and Resilient Design 2. Tall Wood Survey: Identifying and Analyzing the Obstacles of Perception 3. Sustainable and Energy Efficient Commercial Retrofit: Case Study of Perkins and Will Atlanta Office 4. A Contextual Study for Healthy Communities in China: Towards Culturally-Sensitive Urban Design and Planning

Vol. 08.01 / 2016 1. Designed for Performance: Research Methods in a Collaborative Studio Rethinking Modern Curtain Walls 2. Optimizing Spatial Adjacencies Using Evolutionary Parametric Tools: Using Grasshopper and Galapagos to Analyze, Visualize, and Improve Complex Architectural Programming 3. Urban Modeling with Agent-Based System 4. Urban Microclimates and Energy Efficient Buildings 5. Apples to Oranges: Comparing Building Materials Data

Vol. 07.01 / 2015

1. Building Resilience: A Framework for Assessing and Communicating the Costs and Benefits of Resilient Design Strategies 2. Developments in Residential Open Building: Analysis and Reflections on Two Seminal Case Studies 3. Simulation Modeling as a Lean Tool for Healthcare Design: Determining Room Utilization and Staffing in the Emergency Department 4. Shrinking Wetlands, Sinking Cities: Why Preserving and Restoring Wetlands Can Help Save Our Coastal Cities

Vol. 06.02 / 2014

Vol. 05.02 / 2013

Vol. 04.02 / 2012

1. Lessons from Tall Wood Buildings: What We Learned from Ten International Examples 2. Impact of Lean Principles on Timely Project Completion 3. Sound Masking Systems and Their Effectiveness: Does Sound Masking Really Work?

4. Analysis of Therapeutic Gardens for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders 5. A Vision and Planning Framework for Health Districts of the Future

1. Using a Lean Perspective to Explore the Impact of the Built Environment and Operations on the Retention of Patients in an Outpatient Care Delivery Setting: Improving Efficiency as a Strategy to Increase Capacity 2. Holding the Sun at Bay: A Study in the Development of the Double-Skin Façade for the Case Western Reserve University Tinkham Veale University Center 3. Achieving Energy Independence: Methods and Case Studies in Healthcare for Use of Waste to Energy Technologies 4. Interdisciplinary Training in Medical Simulation: A Comparison of Team Training Courses in Simulation Programs in Hospital Healthcare Systems, Medical Schools and Nursing Schools 5. A Zero Net Energy Building Pilot Study: Low Energy Strategies for Weygand Residence Hall at Bridgewater State University 1. Process Modeling Informing the Size of Waiting Spaces 2. Positive Distraction and Age Differences: Design Implications for Pediatric Healthcare Environments 3. Architect’s Professional Liability Risks in the Realm of Green Buildings 4. Simulation Modeling as a Method for Determining Facility Size of an Emergency Department Using Lean Design Principles 5. The Impact of an Operational Process on Space: Improving the Efficiency of Patient Wait Times

Vol. 06.01 / 2014

Vol. 05.01 / 2013

Vol. 04.01 / 2012

1. Lighting and the Living Lab: Testing Innovative Lighting Control Systems in the Workplace 2. A Case Study in Reflective Daylighting 3. Game Changers: Shaping Learning 4. Is There a “There” There? Online Education & ArchitectureX 5. Between Laboratory and Factory: A British Model for Innovation in Manufacturing and Applied Technologies 6. The Resource Infinity Loop: Ecoshed Planning for Resilient Cities 7. Labor-Delivery-Recovery Room Design that Facilitates Non-Pharmacological Reduction of Labor Pain: A Model LDR Room Plan and Recommended Best Practices

1. Constitutional Ecology: The Case for Aligning Science and the Law in Urban Design 2. Building Simulations and HighPerformance Buildings Research: Use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Integrated Design and Analysis 3. North House: Prototyping Climate Responsive Envelope and Control Systems 4. Current Trends in Low-Energy HVAC Design

1. Architectural Services During Construction: Duties and Liability 2. Re-Skinning: Performance-Based Design and Fabrication of Building Facade Components: Design Computing, Analytics and Prototyping 3. A Simple Model for Comparing Healthcare Staff Walking Efficiencies Across Different Hospital Floor Plan Designs 4. Projecting Returns on Transit Investment 5. Sustainable Design Strategies and Technical Design Development: Rush University Medical Center Entry Pavilion

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Vol. 03.02 / 2011

Vol. 02.02 / 2010

Vol. 01.02 / 2009

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1. A Design-Based Approach to Collecting Evidence: Translating Design Investigation Into a Valid Research Model 2. Upod: A Modular Living Environment for Students: The Case for Today’s Community 3. The Information Content of BIM: An Information Theory Analysis of Building Information Model (BIM) Content 4. Performance-Driven Design and Prototyping: Design Computation and Fabrication 5. BIM on the WAN: Autodesk’s Revit and the Wide Area Design Problem Facades

1. Building Performance Predictions: How Simulations Can Improve Design Decisions 2. Exploration of Complex Curtain Wall Solutions: Shanghai Fisherman’s Wharf Iconic Tower 3. Students of Today and Tomorrow: Discovering How and Where They Learn 4. Energy Modeling Guidance: Guidelines for Energy Analysis Integration into an Architectural Environment 5. Design Considerations for Pool Environments: Cold Climates

1. A Study for Carbon Neutrality: The Impact of Decisions, Design and Energy: Transforming Residence Life 2. Systems Thinking: Seven Reasons Why it is Good for You and Everything Else 3. Automating Practice: Defining Use of Computation in The Architectural Design Workflow 4. Clinical Processes Informing The Design of The Emergency Department 5. Transcending Project Type – Principles for High Performance Interior Design: High Performance Interiors + Evidence-Based Design

Vol. 03.01 / 2011

Vol. 02.01/ 2010

1. A Study About Occupant Engagement: Energy Reduction Using an Online Competition Dashboard 2. Global Design in Developing Countries: A Case Study for Kenya Women and Children’s Wellness Centre 3. Parametric Control of BIM Elements for Sustainable Design in Revit: Linking Design and Analytic Software Applications Through Customization 4. Understanding Glare: Design Methods for Improving Visual Comfort

1. Cell Wall: Resolving Geometrical Complexities in the Shanghai Nature Museum Iconic Wall 2. The Effect of Heat Flow And Moisture on the Exterior Enclosure: Working With Standards and Modeling Software to Make More Intelligent Exterior Enclosure Decisions 3. Hygroscopic Climatic Modulated Boundaries 4. Comparative Analysis of Flooring Materials: Environmental and Economic Performance 5. Urban Wastewater: A Renewable, Reliable Water Resource for Urban Farming

1. Building Commissioning: Strategies, Criteria and Applications 2. Healthcare Think Tank: A Collaborative Approach to Innovation 3. Choosing The Right Green Building Rating System 4. Quantifiable Benefits of Access to Nature in Buildings 5. Context Based Design of Double Skin Facades 6. Mountain Pine Beetle 7. “Water, Water... Not Everywhere”

Vol. 01.01 / 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Phil Harrison, FAIA, LEED AP, BD+C .................................................................. Page 3 PREFACE: David Green, AIA, LEED AP, BD+C .................................................................. Page 5 EDITORIAL: Ajla Aksamija, PhD, LEED AP BD+C, CDT

Kalpana Kuttaiah, Associate AIA, LEED BD+C............................................................. Page 6 PREVIOUS ISSUES .................................................................. Page 8 JOURNAL OVERVIEW .................................................................. Page 13 01. PRACTICALLY PRODUCTIVE: Designing for Well-Being and the Return on Value David Cordell, ASID, LEED AP, WELL AP, Fitwel Ambassador Haley Nelson, ASID, LEED AP, WELL AP Jon Penndorf, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, Fitwel Ambassador, RELi AP........................................... Page 15 02. SHADOW BOX DESIGN: To Vent or Not to Vent Mark Walsh, AIA, LEED AP

.................................................................. Page 30

03. DESIGNING FOR FUTURE MOBILITY: Developing a Framework for the Livable Future City Aaron Knorr, RA, LEED AP .................................................................. Page 39 04. CONSTRUCTING PERFORMANCE-BASED TOOLS AND PRACTICES: Exploring Living Challenge, Mixed-Use, and High-Rise Building Design Spaces John Haymaker, PhD, AIA, LEED AP Christopher Meek, AIA, IES Devin Kleiner, AIA, LEED AP BD+C Rob Pena Heather Burpee Weston Norwood, LEED AP BD+C .................................................................. Page 56 05. CONSTRUCTING DESIGN SPACES: Case Studies in Parametric Building Performance Analysis at Perkins and Will Victor Okhoya, ALMIT, Associate AIA Marcelo Bernal, PhD Cheney Chen, PhD, PEng, BEMP, CPHD, LEED AP BD+C Tyrone Marshall, AIA, LEED AP BD+C John Haymaker, PhD, AIA, LEED AP .................................................................. Page 77 PEER REVIEWERS .................................................................. Page 99 AUTHORS .................................................................. Page 100 AUTHORS: ALL PREVIOUS ISSUES .................................................................. Page 104 PEER REVIEWERS: ALL PREVIOUS ISSUES .................................................................. Page 106

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JOURNAL OVERVIEW This issue of Perkins and Will Research Journal includes five articles that focus on different research topics, such as the occupant well-being within work environments, a literature review focusing on shadow box design, and ventilating strategies, defining future mobility principles that support livable city goals, ongoing academic and professional collaboration and, a parametric analysis framework aimed at making multidisciplinary design exploration more methodical.

“Practically Productive: Designing for Well-being and the Return on Value” investigates design strategies that enhance whole person well-being in the workplace and can positively influence business performance metrics. The evaluation revealed that designs utilizing strategies targeting physical health, emotional happiness, mental focus and spiritual purpose have the greatest impact on both occupant health and business performance.

“Shadow Box Design: To Vent or Not To Vent” discusses four approaches to ventilating the shadow box cavity, and presents a literature review. The article provides an analysis of benefits and drawbacks of different ventilation strategies.

“Designing for Future Mobility: Developing a Framework for the Livable Future City” investigates a series of principles and design opportunities, informed by this research, and identifies ways to help shape the implementation of design decisions towards positive livable city outcomes.

“Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices: Exploring Living Challenge, Mixed-Use, and HighRise Building Design Spaces” reports on an ongoing academic and professional collaboration to develop and test computational, performance-based design methods, to discover and develop design talent skilled in using these methods.

“Constructing Design Spaces: Case Studies in Parametric Building Performance Analysis at Perkins and Will” explores three case studies that have utilized the Design Space Construction framework for performance-driven building design explorations.

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Practically Productive

01.

Practically Productive: Designing for Well-Being and the Return on Value David Cordell, ASID, LEED AP, WELL AP, Fitwel Ambassador, david.cordell@perkinswill.com

Haley Nelson, ASID, LEED AP, WELL AP, haley.nelson@perkinswill.com Jon Penndorf, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, Fitwel Ambassador, RELi AP, Jon.Penndorf@perkinswill.com

ABSTRACT The goal of this research is to explore the link between the built environment and occupant well-being using completed pre- and post-occupancy evaluations in conjunction with literature review on the topic. We hypothesized that investing in strategies that enhance whole person well-being in the workplace can positively impact business performance metrics. The methodology was to combine an analysis of design strategies from third-party rating systems for their potential impact on health with findings from a literature review of why well-being is important and a review of publicly-available pre- and post-occupancy research for metrics to support the impact of design. Using the Energy Project as a framework to define whole person well-being, the research analyzed each strategy’s impact on the four dimensions well-being: physical health, emotional happiness, mental focus and spiritual purpose.

The headquarters of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) in Washington, DC, designed by Perkins and Will, incorporated a range of well-being strategies that contributed to it becoming the first project to be certified LEED v2009 Platinum and WELL v1 Platinum. ASID conducted an in-depth pre- and post-occupancy research project that served as an exemplary model for this research by demonstrating the impact that design has on the four dimensions of well-being.

The evaluation revealed that designs utilizing strategies targeting physical health, emotional happiness, mental focus and spiritual purpose in concert have the greatest impact on both occupant health and business performance.

Conclusively, the authors recommend the development of an industry standard framework for pre- and postoccupancy research that establishes a common methodology for gathering metrics in the four dimensions of well-being.

KEYWORDS: healthy environments, workplace design, whole person wellness, design for business

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) states that 20 percent of an individual’s health status directly relates to the quality of their environment1. As occupant health and wellness becomes one of the prevailing themes in the design and construction industry, we see more rat-

ing systems and evaluation tools emerging that attempt to quantify how a building or space impacts occupants.

Much emphasis has been placed on the physiological health of occupants. As early as 2010, the City of New York saw a correlation between the design of the community and the increased rates of obesity and Type 2

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diabetes occurring within its confines2. Only recently has the quantification of impact broadened to topics of productivity, mental health, and social connectivity.

With 90 percent of a business’s operating costs attributed to staff costs3, investing in the built environment can significantly impact the operations and human resources investment. According to the Integrated Benefits Institute, productivity losses related to health cost U.S. employers over $225 billion annually4. Research by the CDC now demonstrates benefits to employee health and productivity through workplace policies and design1. This research seeks to demonstrate that investing in strategies that enhance whole person well-being in the workplace can positively impact business performance metrics.

This research stems from the authors’ previous analysis of third-party certification programs and guidelines available to the design and construction industry. The programs were compared to find overlaps in design strategies, which were then charted against the four dimensions of well-being as defined by the Energy Project: physical health, emotional happiness, mental focus, and spiritual purpose5. This research took each of the four dimensions and created supporting impact categories to identify strategies to be implemented in concert to address total human health and well-being.

As all of the rating systems analyzed include both design and operations strategies, the most comprehensive approach to total well-being includes both types, and requires commitment to health beyond design and construction.

Connecting whole-person well-being to business metrics is currently a challenge, with so few projects achieving health-specific certifications that go on to measure and quantify the value. Initial findings support the added value, and a recent case study of Cundall’s WELL Gold certified London office showed a 58 percent reduction in absenteeism and a 27 percent reduction in turnover6. When compared to the cost of adding WELL certification to the project (estimated at 3.6 percent of the project cost), the return on investment was captured in less than two months.

1.1 Defining Whole-Person Well-Being

While not specifically focused on health issues, early sustainability certification programs included topics such as indoor air quality and access to views of nature.

Little emphasis was put on mental health or community connectivity, with empirical data translated mostly to topics of decreased absenteeism and decreased allergy and asthma concerns. In the same vein, corporate

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wellness programs have been in existence for decades with a focus on physical wellness. These programs place emphasis on promoting exercise and cessation of smoking to improve health, yet overall results show their effectiveness is limited. Studies shown 67 percent of Americans are still considered overweight and 21 percent still smoke7.

The Energy Project is a business consulting company that seeks to maximize a company’s potential by bolstering the energy of its people. In a study conducted in conjunction with Harvard University, they found a strong correlation between how people feel when their core needs are met, and how they perform. “The more that companies invested in meeting their people’s needs — physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually — the more engaged, focused, satisfied, and loyal they became. When all four needs were met, people were 1.25 times more engaged, more than twice as focused, and 2.5 times more likely to remain at the company”5.

While the focus of the Energy Project consulting is business performance and efficiency and not specifically employee health, the translation of the core needs can be directly made to human well-being. Contemporary wellness certification programs were developed to address more than just the physical health of occupants.

As noted in the WELL Building Standard, “comprehensive and interdisciplinary approaches are necessary to meaningfully address the complex issues of human health and well-being”8.

Other sources that focus on whole-person well-being align with the four core dimensions of the Energy Project, supporting its use as a mechanism for this study.

The Center for Successful Aging at the California State University College of Health and Human Development uses the same four dimensions but adds vocational and emotional as two more facets. The Center defines whole person wellness as “the integration of an individual’s multiple dimensions into positive beliefs and meaningful activities”9. They also note the concept must support balance among the individual’s core needs and integration of activities to support a balanced and full life.

Physical health may be the most commonly recognizable dimension of well-being. Physical health is the cornerstone to all dimensions of energy, promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors that support physical activity and fitness, immune system function, and body composition10, 11. The impact categories for physical health focus on physical activity, hydration, nutrition, vitality, comfort, and occupant safety. The last criteria may also

Practically Productive

have emotional benefit as well, but the idea of occupant safety focuses on an individual’s physical security.

Emotional happiness describes the link between a person’s outlook and their performance, encouraging a positive view of oneself and the ability to manage feelings, behaviors, acceptance, and stress management in order to cultivate joy10, 11. Impact categories include promoting engagement, reducing stress, personal fulfillment, value, and mood.

Mental focus refers to the ability to engage in a task in an absorbed way while alternating between tactical and conceptual thinking10, 11. Impact categories include productivity, accuracy and precision, increased cognitive function, and choice.

Spiritual purpose is the concept that people feel satisfaction from serving something larger than themselves10. Impact categories of this dimension of well-being includes social responsibility, sense of community, equity and diversity, and organizational culture. This core area may be most influenced by an organization’s operational procedures more than physical space, but elements of the environment can contribute to cultivating a positive spiritual purpose.

1.2 Multi-Attribute Rating Systems as a Source for Strategies to Support Well-Being

For almost two decades, independent organizations have offered third-party certification programs as a means of benchmarking performance of the built environment. In 2000, the U.S. Green Building Council introduced a cross-industry, balloted platform called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED12. As LEED became more widely-adopted and the checklist format comfortable to project teams, new certifications emerged that reflect specific project attributes.

There are currently certification programs in well-being, resilience, site design, and general sustainability. While not all focus on human health, many have attributes that can be applied to concepts of whole person wellbeing and there are several areas of overlap both in focus and in strategy. As such, each certification program can be used as a lens through which to examine how a building can enhanced health and well-being with or without pursuit of the certification.

The authors’ previous work that inspired this research identified nine certification rating systems and guidelines known within the design and construction industry. Each credit within the various rating systems was analyzed for whole-person well-being attributes, using

Figure 1: A representative graphic from the authors’ previous research that illustrates a project’s performance in the four dimensions of well-being and their impact categories.

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the four dimensions of well-being and their impact categories. Research included the creation of a database which is searchable by health attribute or by certification credit to identify overlaps among the systems. The following serves as an overview of the programs analyzed and offer resources for strategies that can improve occupant well-being.

directly relate to human health. The LBC is known for its “red list” of materials and chemicals banned from use on projects because of known toxic exposure effects on people. The program has also inspired the ILFI to develop product specific certifications focused on material health (the Declare label) and social equity (the Just label)16.

1.2.1. Sustainability Certifications The LEED rating system started as a broad survey of sustainability topics as they apply to a design and construction project. One of the goals of the LEED rating systems is to enhance individual human health and well-being, among other broader project goals13. With some variation introduced in LEED v4, all project typologies have categories related to site design and location, energy and atmosphere, water conservation, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation. Within this framework, the Materials and Resources and Indoor Environmental Quality categories have credits most directly related to health and wellbeing topics. The credits are approached from a general sustainability perspective, but USGBC provides significant background data regarding how each topic is justified and many take into account health attributes.

Among the LEED platforms, LEED BD+C and LEED ID+C are the most widely used, and have significant overlaps with respect to the Materials and Resources and Indoor Environmental Quality categories.

The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) administers the Envision certification platform, focused more on infrastructure, site, and master planning. While less focused on specific buildings or interiors, there are overlaps between it and other platforms. A category of credits labeled “Quality of Life” focuses on health and well-being from a community connectivity perspective17.

Green Globes is another general sustainability benchmarking rating system that is administered only by the Green Building Initiative (GBI). It was introduced in the United States in 2004 after being developed in Canada and originally modeled off the BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) program from the United Kingdom. Green Globes is designed for project team self-assessment and is based primarily on ASHRAE and the ANSI/GBI 01-2010: Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings14. The program includes categories focused on occupant health by addressing acoustic comfort, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, visual comfort, layout, amenities, and wellness.

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) is a program developed by the International Living Futures Institute (ILFI), and was developed to push building certifications past “less bad” than the baseline to true regenerative design15. The credit requirements for certification are more rigorous than most other sustainability platforms and require a reporting period after operations commence in addition to design and construction credits.

The program has categories or “petals”, some of which

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1.2.2. Well-Being Certifications In a relatively short time-span, two health and well-being certification programs emerged attempting to shift market attention towards human health. Both programs focus exclusively on human health and are deeply rooted in scientific and medical research. Both programs offer in depth analyses of how the built environment affects occupants.

Delos and The International Well Building Institute (IWBI) introduced the WELL Building Standard in 2014.

Organized similarly to LEED, the platform includes one hundred performance metrics organized into seven concepts. Design strategies are intended to improve health, comfort and knowledge, and are tied to specific physiological systems. Certification in WELL requires documentation by a project team during design and construction, as well as site verification of several metrics after project completion8.

The Fitwel Certification System is administered by the Center for Active Design, and was introduced to the market in 2016. Development of Fitwel was guided by the CDC and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), with multiple federal facilities used as pilot cases. Fitwel also provides evidence-based justification for its sixty-three strategies, which are spread among seven health impact categories. Point values are weighted based on the level of positive health impact a strategy offers based on the research sourced. The program is aimed at workplace environments, but has since diversified to also include multi-family residential facilities.

Fitwel is meant to be a user-friendly and cost-effective evaluation tool and certification program, applicable to both health goals for new construction, as well as benchmarking existing buildings18.

Practically Productive

While not a certification program, The New York City Active Design Guidelines is perhaps the precursor to current wellness rating systems. Developed in 2010 as a project of the New York City Departments of Design and Construction (DDC), Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation (DOT) and City Planning in conjunction with the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Guidelines serve as a compilation of best practices focused on physical activity and community engagement. The program offers no rating system or credits. It focuses on responsible urban planning and enhancing building design to support more active occupants2.

1.2.3. Resilience Certifications Climate change and hazard mitigation have become charges for the design community. This is most evident after recent severe weather caused significant damage and loss of life in populous parts of the United States, such as New York, New Jersey, and Texas. However, such damage has been prevalent in other parts of the country and world for decades. The ability of a structure to resist shocks and stressors from the outside environment and protect occupants and property is a function of the level of resilience it possesses. Resilient design encourages buildings and communities that are shock resistant, healthy, adaptable and regenerative through a combination of diversity, foresight, and the capacity for self-organization and learning19.

In 2014 the RELi Action List + Credit Catalog was published in draft format, without weighted credits or points. Through a series of prerequisites and credits, the checklist was intended to be a design tool for teams to cover a series of resilience topics related to shortterm and long-term risks to the building and its population. It pulls credit standards from a variety of other previously established certification programs, such as LEED and Envision20. The RELi platform was acquired in 2017 by USGBC with the intent of development into a more formal benchmarking platform. It was included in the study of certifications because there is an emphasis in several categories on human health and safety as they relate to preparedness, mitigation, and strategies that may reduce impacts on the natural environment.

2.0 RETURN ON VALUE

The ability for people to impact the cost of business is significant, as noted previously, it has been shown that 90 percent of a business’s operating costs are attributed to staff costs3. It is estimated that workers spend an average of 90,000 hours at work in their lifetimes21.

Therefore, the quality of the workplace environments

can influence workers’ performance and satisfaction, ultimately impacting business performance. Furniture manufacturer Steelcase and The Leesman Index are two groups that are already exploring the relationship between physical space and business performance22.

In response to growing concerns over employee health, many organizations have begun implementing in-house wellness programs aimed at improving employee behaviors and attracting new talent. Unfortunately, only 24 percent of employees participate in these programs23.

At a cost upward of $700 per employee,24 this is a large investment on something that offers no benefit for 80 percent of an organization’s employees. Imagine an alternative where, by allocating those funds toward enhancing the quality of your workspace, an organization can benefit 100 percent of employees every day, simply by providing a healthier environment that supports whole person well-being, while at the same time boosting overall satisfaction and productivity.

The headquarters of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) in Washington, DC was designed by Perkins and Will and incorporated a range of well-being strategies that contributed to it becoming the first project to be certified LEED v2009 Platinum and WELL v1 Platinum. ASID conducted an in-depth pre- and postoccupancy research project that demonstrated, along with additional research, the impact that design has on occupant well-being. There are many subjective and anecdotal findings to support designing for well-being; however, there is a limited body of knowledge available with comprehensive pre- and post-occupancy metrics that validate specific strategies. For this reason, this research focuses primarily on findings from the ASID headquarters, supplemented with a literature review focused on the return on value of increased health and wellbeing in the workplace.

2.1 Physical Health

Physical health is the cornerstone to all dimensions of energy, promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors that support physical activity and fitness, immune system function, and body composition10, 11. Lack of physical movement and an over-consumption of calories has led to the population facing an epidemic of chronic disease such as obesity25. A typical American spends a little over 90 percent of their time indoors26 and 20 percent of an individual’s health status is a direct result of the quality of their environment27. Additionally, another 50 percent is a result of behavior patterns, which are heavily influenced by one’s environment27. Knowing this, the importance of the quality of indoor environments on physi-

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cal health becomes apparent. Through the authors’ research and analysis of the aforementioned third party rating systems, physical health can be demonstrated by the impact categories: physical activity, nutrition, hydration, vitality, comfort, and occupant safety. The following sections illustrate how some of these categories impact occupant well-being.

2.1.1 Physical Activity The majority of people spend upwards of 90 percent of their time in indoor environments, and are often in sedentary occupations25. This inactive behavior, along with unhealthy eating habits, is second to tobacco use as the primary cause of premature death in the U. S.25.

Research suggests that the built environment can improve physical activity and strong evidence has been shown to support strategies such as placing signage at elevators and escalators to encourage stair use and including exercise rooms with views to the outdoors in office or residential buildings25.

The ASID headquarters design includes strategies intended to promote increased physical activity. Each employee has free access to a fitness center, a heightadjustable sit-to-stand desk, healthy snacks, and filtered water throughout the day. The copy and pantry

support spaces are centralized to encourage additional activity. ASID monitored the physical health scores of their employees pre-occupancy as well as post-occupancy and compared those scores to the U.S. average.

Although ASID employees were already healthier than the national average, physical health scores increased 7 percent after moving into a space that better promoted physical activity28.

2.1.2 Hydration Drinking water is essential to promote the health of every system in the body29. The availability or prevalence of filtered drinking water in an office environment, however, may limit the amount employees are able to drink during a work day30.

The ASID headquarters promotes drinking water by providing filtered water in the central pantry as well as offering fruit-infused water throughout the week. Each employee was given a large reusable water bottle and engaged in monthly water drinking challenges. These workplace enhancements not only encouraged employees to drink more water, but also added to the social environment in the office28. Adequate hydration has also been shown to increase employee productivity up to 14 percent30.

Figure 2: Each desk in the open work area at the ASID headquarters area is height adjustable to encourage occupants to change posture throughout the day. (Photography by Eric Laignel).

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2.2 Emotional Happiness

Emotional happiness describes the link between a person’s outlook and their performance, encouraging a positive view of oneself and the ability to manage feelings, behaviors, acceptance, and stress management in order to cultivate joy10, 11. Emotions are explicitly linked with feelings and they are contagious, passing on a happy and productive outlook to colleagues or polluting others with negative, value-depriving attitudes31.

The power that emotions have on people at work, no matter the industry, are linked through neurological reactions and point to three values: a vision of the future, a sense of purpose, and great relationships31.

Through the authors’ research and analysis of aforementioned third party rating systems, emotional happiness can be demonstrated by the impact categories: promote engagement, reduce stress, personal fulfilment, value, and mood. The following section illustrates how some of these categories impact occupant wellbeing.

2.2.1 Promote Engagement According to a 2018 Gallup study, only 13 percent of the workforce is actively engaged and those companies who employ them outperform their peers by 147 per-

cent in earning per share32. There is a strong business case to invest in promoting more engagement in the workplace, but also a health and well-being case. Employees that are considered “engaged” are 21 percent more likely to participate in well-being programs33.

The ASID headquarters supported engaging their employees by providing choice in the work environment based on specific tasks. The office space is a free address environment where employees do not have a dedicated work space, but can move between concentrative, focused work areas and collaborative, interactive work areas. ASID measured a 9 percent increase in collaborative work after moving to the environment and found that their typical day switched to be more collaborative as compared to concentrative in the previous office environment that did not offer choice. Employees are now able to better engage with each other and the self-reported communication preference changed from email to face-to-face interactions, with 83 percent finding that they have access to spaces that support the sharing of ideas28.

2.3 Mental Focus

Mental focus refers to the ability to engage in a task in an absorbed way while alternating between tactical and

Figure 3: The ASID headquarters supported engaging their employees by providing choice in the work environment based on specific tasks. The office space is a free address environment where employees do not have a dedicated work space, but can move between concentrative, focused work areas and collaborative, interactive work areas. (Photography by Eric Laignel).

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conceptual thinking10. Workplace design often focuses on supporting collaboration and flexibility while balancing reduced real estate cost and environmental impact.

This results in open office environments with low partitions that provide visual connection to peers, increased daylight and varied meeting support, but at the expense of individual control and preference. Spaces focusing solely on collaboration without providing equal support for individual focused work and analytical thinking negatively impact well-being and productivity. A 2012 GSA survey of 3,700 government employees felt their inability to control the acoustic quality of their environment reduced their ability to work productively34. Through the authors’ research and analysis of the aforementioned third party rating systems mental focus can be demonstrated by the impact categories: increased productivity, accuracy and precision, increased cognitive functioning and choice. The following sections illustrate how some of these categories impact occupant well-being.

2.3.1 Increase Productivity The ASID headquarters implemented a number of strategies aimed at improving productivity through increased mental focus. A 2016 study by Harvard School of Public Health links increased ventilation rates, above those acceptable by code, with improved cognitive performance. Test subject’s performance improved 8 percent on cognitive tasks when the amount of outside air was doubled in the space35. Enhanced air filtration and introduction of more outside air result maintain carbon dioxide levels at 570 ppm on average, which is 158 percent lower than the pre-occupancy study28.

Physical and thermal comfort, acoustics, and access to natural elements were all performance enhancing design strategies that, while difficult to tie directly to performance, show dramatically improved satisfaction scores. Twenty-five percent of employees credit the circadian lighting system for improved sleep quality, resulting in feeling more awake and focused at work28.

Recognizing the combined impact of these strategies on human health, we begin to see a positive relationship between the improved quality of the environment and improved occupant health. Absenteeism scores have decreased by 19 percent, resulting in 9.6 minutes more work completed per hour. Presentism scores increased by 16 percent, indicating that employees feel they are working at 90 percent of their possible performance28.

There is also convergence to be noted here in the overlaps of dimensions – in this case strategies employed benefiting both mental focus and physical health.

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2.3.2 Choice Providing occupants with choice and control over their environment is linked to reduced cortisol levels in the brain, having a calming effect, helping people become more focused36. Activity-based settings and free address work environments are becoming common strategies to provide employees with choice, flexibility and individual control. A recent study cited 68 percent of people surveyed believe that their flexible work policies made them more effective37. Personal control of physical work space has also been shown to increase job satisfaction38 and environmental control of temperature is linked to as much as 7 percent improvement in performance39.

In 2014, Perkins and Will was re-engaged by a former client, Be the Match, to assess their workplace environment in downtown Minneapolis and develop new strategies for increased flexibility and mobility. The proposed strategies created a new work environment offering team members greater control over where and when work gets done and allows greater flexibility by providing varied work settings to accommodate different practices. Post-occupancy survey results show that employees reported feeling less stressed and a 24 percent improvement in their ability to concentrate and hold private conversations.

At the ASID headquarters, employees do not have assigned seats. Instead, implementing a free address system enables employees to select from a variety of work environments that range from public and highly collaborative to private heads-down focused spaces. Employees self-select where they work each day based on which physical location best supports the tasks they are doing at the time. The organization of the space clusters collaborative spaces together away from the focus spaces to account for the varying levels of acoustic privacy required. The mechanical system provides a 3-degree temperature differential across the open office space, allowing employees the opportunity to select workstations in the warmer or cooler side of the office based on personal preference28.

Post-occupancy survey results releveled that employee satisfaction increased across many environmental conditions due to occupant choice and control. These conditions include lighting quality, noise reduction, speech privacy, available space, visual privacy, and ease of interaction, contributing to a dramatic 69 percent increase in attachment to place. Employees that rated higher on “attachment to place” perceived social support, stress tolerance, and collaboration are tied to higher productivity scores28.

Practically Productive

Figure 4: The configuration of the ASID headquarters office space locates enclosed focus spaces away from open collaborative spaces to account for the varying levels of acoustic privacy required. (Photography by Eric Laignel).

Figure 5: The centrally located CafĂŠ at the ASID headquarters provides a social gathering space to support a sense of community. (Photography by Eric Laignel).

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2.4 Spiritual Purpose

Spiritual purpose is the concept that people feel satisfaction from serving something larger than themselves 10 . Often defined as spirituality at work, measuring the impact of spiritual purpose on well-being and productivity is challenged by a lack of consistent methods for quantifying and validating data40. Val Kinjerski developed an eighteen point Spirit at Work Scale, which includes four sub-classifications: engaging work, mystical experience, spiritual connection, and sense of community. This scale has been positively linked to several workplace attributes including job satisfaction, personal accomplishment, and organizational commitment41. In another study looking at job satisfaction in long-term nursing care staff, meaningful work and environments that support community connection reveal significant reductions in absenteeism and turnover rates42. Through the authors’ research and analysis of the aforementioned third party rating systems mental focus can be demonstrated by the impact categories: social responsibility, sense of community, equity and diversity, and organizational culture. The following section illustrates how some of these categories impact occupant well-being.

2.4.1 Sense of Community Sense of community describes a person’s feelings of connection to those around them and a sense of belonging to a common purpose. When combined with meaningful work, community can be a powerful force resulting in greater employee satisfaction. Camaraderie or the development of friendships in the office is a good way to create a common purpose and sense of belonging exemplified by community. Organizations which strive to develop corporate cultures that embrace community often see it as an advantage for engagement and productivity43. A feeling of belonging is a basic human need that is essential to being our best selves44. Social

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science researcher Brené Brown defines belonging as “the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it”44.

In addition to the design strategies targeting physical space, ASID implemented many operational protocols that impact well-being. One was the introduction of health challenges, which is a common way of fostering community and belonging. The goal of the challenges is to increase occupant health and wellness by encouraging healthier behavior through incorporation of gamification strategies and team competitions. Game theory is increasingly used by corporations to engage employees while simultaneously increasing productivity.

Healthcare companies are utilizing gamification through app development to promote better lifestyle habits45. By taking these principles and applying it to group and individual health challenges that target specific well-being concepts, ASID is able to encourage healthier behaviors and ultimately reduce negative health impacts associated with working in a corporate office environment, while fostering sense of community. Regularly held challenges focus on specific concepts, like healthier commuter patterns, drinking water promotion and increasing physical activity. These challenges are partially credited for ASID employee’s physical health scores being almost 7 percent higher than the U.S. average28.

In addition to health challenges contributing to sense of community, ASID attributed the environmental characteristics of visual privacy and ease of interaction as important factors leading to perceived social support in the office. When employees perceive social support at work, they report higher job satisfaction, creativity, and productivity28.

Practically Productive

3.0 ANALYSIS

The findings from the ASID pre- and post-occupancy research, combined with the results reported by other scholars in this article, demonstrate that investing in strategies that enhance whole person well-being in the workplace can positively impact business performance metrics. Strategies that support specific aspects of wellness are important and can yield positive health and business benefits, but to fully embrace wellness a space must support all four dimensions of human wellbeing. To support physical health, ASID invested in providing free access to a fitness center, a height-adjustable sit-to-stand desk, healthy snacks, filtered water, and centralized support spaces to encourage activity for all employees. This resulted in improved physical health scores. To support emotional happiness, ASID implemented a free address work environment and a variety of collaborative spaces resulting in an increase in collaborative work and access to spaces that support the sharing of ideas. To support mental focus ASID invested in enhanced air filtration and the introduction of more outside air, a circadian lighting system, enhanced acoustic performance, access to natural elements, and an activity-based work environment which all contributed to increased employee productivity and attachment to place. In support of spiritual purpose ASID utilizes employee challenges as team building exercises to create a sense of community.

The post-occupancy data from ASID reports a productivity gain of 16 percent which, when extrapolated equals 9.6 minutes more work per hour. Multiplied out, 9.6 minutes an hour times 40 hours a week and then multiplied by 52 weeks in a year equals 19,200 minutes, or the equivalent of eight weeks of additional productive time a year per employee. Another way to look at the potential impact on business performance is through a hypothetical dollar value. The average cost of an employee in the District of Columbia is $144,500 based on average salary of $85,000 + 70 percent overhead46.

Assuming a typical office design results in 200 sf per person, then the cost of a single employee annually is $723 per sf. Using a 16 percent productivity increase, the value of that productivity gain equals $115.60 per sf ($144,500 x 0.16/ 200 = $115.60). When this value is multiplied across a hypothetical 25,000 sf floor plate over the duration of a typical 10 year lease, the potential value of an organization’s return on investment is $28,9000,000. This is substantially larger than the capital investment in the strategies that led to this improved performance metric.

Figure 6: The additional construction costs associated with strategies above “best practice� in order to build the ASID Headquarters was estimated by Perkins and Will to be 16%, or an additional $26.62 per square foot.

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Figure 7: The additional construction costs associated with incorporating well-being strategies for the ASID Headquarters project is compared to an estimated financial gain of 3 minutes per hour, or a 5% productivity increase. An estimated financial gain from a 5% productivity increase for a company occupying 25,000 square feet of office space over the course of a 10 year lease represents $9,032,500 without escalation.

Figure 8: An estimated financial return of $9,032,500 for 25,000 square feet of office space represents in a gain of $361.30 per square foot over a 10 year lease term, which exceeds the initial investment of $26.62 per square foot (based on actual data from Perkins and Will for the ASID Headquarters). When the illustrative measure of a 5% productivity gain is increased to the measured results of the ASID Headquarters, which indicated a 16% productivity gain, the financial return then increases to $1,156 per square foot over 10 years.

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4.0 CONCLUSIONS

The findings from the ASID pre- and post-occupancy research, combined with the results reported by other scholars in this article, demonstrate that investing in strategies that enhance whole person well-being in the workplace can positively impact business performance metrics. Strategies that support specific aspects of wellness are important and can yield positive health and business benefits, but to fully embrace wellness a space must support all four dimensions of human wellbeing. To support physical health, ASID invested in providing free access to a fitness center, a height-adjustable sit-to-stand desk, healthy snacks, filtered water, and centralized support spaces to encourage activity for all employees. This resulted in improved physical health scores. To support emotional happiness, ASID implemented a free address work environment and a variety of collaborative spaces resulting in an increase in collaborative work and access to spaces that support the sharing of ideas. To support mental focus ASID invested in enhanced air filtration and the introduction of more outside air, a circadian lighting system, enhanced acoustic performance, access to natural elements, and an activity-based work environment, which all contributed to increased employee productivity and attachment to place. In support of spiritual purpose ASID utilizes employee challenges as team building exercises to create a sense of community.

The results achieved by the ASID headquarters highlight that utilizing strategies from each of the four dimensions of whole person well-being in concert provides the most positive impact to employee health. Healthier employees translates into improved business performance.

Ultimately, more quantitative research is needed to corroborate the findings of the ASID occupancy evaluation study. While the study looked at multiple dimensions of human wellbeing, focused pre- and post-occupancy evaluation of a population needs to be conducted to determine how whole person well-being is truly measured, and how specifically supporting all four dimensions of human health can result in positive performance gains in addition to increased individual wellness. However, the speculative calculation above is compelling in demonstrating the economic value increased health and wellbeing can have.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the following colleagues and consultants who provided data, insight, and sources for this paper: Christine Dansereau, Kalpana Kuttaiah, the Innovation Incubator Committee (Perkins and Will); Geoffrey Eddy (Arup); Michael Bloom (GSA); and the staff of the American Society of Interior Designers.

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02.

Shadow Box Design: To Vent or Not To Vent Mark Walsh, AIA, LEED AP, mark.walsh@perkinswill.com

ABSTRACT Shadow boxes are commonly used in curtain wall construction, but can be problematic if not designed and detailed correctly and appropriately for the climate. Much has been written about shadow box design, both successes and failures, but there is no consensus about how, or if, the cavity should be vented. This article presents a literature review about shadow box design, and ventilating strategies. There are four approaches to ventilating the shadow box cavity: venting directly to the exterior environment, venting indirectly to the exterior through the mullion cavities; venting directly to the interior building environment and sealing the cavity. These approaches have been assessed for a temperate-to-cold climate, where the use of insulated glazing units (IGUs) are assumed for the vision light. Venting the cavity directly to either the exterior or the interior building environment introduces moisture- and particulate-laden air that can condense under certain climatic conditions and will likely deposit dust and debris on the interior surfaces of the cavity, creating both permanent and temporary aesthetic concerns.

When venting to the exterior, exterior air can produce extreme hot or cold temperatures inside the cavity that is transferred to the surfaces of the surrounding mullions that are exposed to the building interior to detrimental effect. Sealing the cavity typically eliminates condensation and debris buildup, but the cavity can become overheated as in venting to the exterior. Additionally, there is some evidence that heat and pressure may build up to a point where it could damage the glass and degrade the sealants and coatings inside the cavity. After considering all of the options, indirect venting to the exterior appears to address most of the issues, but with the caveat that it is only feasible with certain unitized curtain wall systems. This approach vents the cavity into the vertical mullions, which ultimately connect to the exterior environment, but do so indirectly, relieving the heat and pressure but also tempering the exterior air that is allowed to enter.

KEYWORDS: curtain wall, condensation, design processes, shadow box

1.0 INTRODUCTION

A curtain wall shadow box is a spandrel assembly consisting of vision glass at the building exterior and an opaque infill at the interior side of the curtain wall system (Figure 1). Shadow boxes are generally used for one of these aesthetic reasons: (1) to maintain the visual continuity of a curtain wall system as it crosses from vision glass to spandrel areas, and (2) to give the spandrels the quality of having visual depth. Shadow boxes are often preferred over opaque-fritted spandrel glass because they use the same glass as adjacent vision areas, and render the opaque areas of the curtain wall nearly indistinguishable from the vision areas.

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Architects have used shadow boxes for visual effect for decades and all indications are that we will continue to do so. Consequently, this article will not argue for, or against, the use of shadow boxes. Rather, the focus of this study was to determine the optimal strategy for ventilating the shadow box cavity that will balance reduction of the likelihood of performance failure with constructability. Research into this topic was twofold: first, through a review of the available literature on shadow box construction and failures; and, secondly, through examination of recent projects in which the author has been involved. It is important to emphasize that shadow boxes will behave differently in different climatic con-

Shadow Box Design

ized. The author concluded that, in a sealed cavity, the effect of temperature rise on cavity pressure is negligible, amounting to 4.5 psf for 280°F temperature rise1.

Additionally, the sealed cavity created a load transfer from the outer panel to the inner panel, especially if the outer panel is flexible (e.g., 1/4” monolithic glass.)

Sealed cavity systems provide a marginally higher benefit than vented systems, but rely heavily on high manufacturing standards. Pressure-equalized systems provide good performance in harsh environments, but need to be protected prior to installation to prevent contamination of the cavity.

Another study, conducted by Boswell and Walker, examined a sealed cavity installation in Beijing, China where the low-E coating was installed on the #3 surface to reflect heat back into the cavity and minimize condensation on the #4 surface2. The suggested solution to prevent condensation in the cavity and “scum” buildup is to provide either a sealed cavity or a cavity that is vented internally, from the cavity to the insulation layer, but not through the vapor barrier.

Figure 1: Components of a typical shadow box.

ditions. The examples and recommendations here are based on use in a temperate-to-cold climate with significant temperature swings across the course of the year, from hot in the summer to very cold in the winter, and assume the use of insulated glass units for the vision light.

2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW

A review of relevant literature, published in the recent past and which represents the most rigorous and scholarly resources, was executed for the purpose of informing the recommendations in this article. Salient points from each of the resources have been summarized in this section below. As stated previously, it is important to note that there is no industry consensus on the recommended design or construction of shadow boxes and there is a conspicuous absence of position papers on the subject by industry groups like American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA), American Institute of Architects (AIA), Construction Specifications Institute (CSI), Glass Association of North America (GANA) or National Glass Association (NGA). Therefore, the following section reviews pertinent literature and findings of previous studies.

A study conducted by Michno evaluated three shadow box configurations: sealed, vented, and pressure equal-

In terms of potential problems with shadow boxes, McCowan et al. identify two issues: imperfect seals between the shadow box back pan and the mullion framing that allow condensation into the cavity, and offgassing of sealants inside the cavity due to high temperatures3. As a potential solution to prevent condensation in the cavity, Vigener and Brown suggest adding an interior back pan behind the insulation4.The use of laminated glass (for structural performance or impact resistance) could limit the acceptable temperature inside the cavity, according to Kragh et al.5. Manufacturer information on the temperature limits of laminated glass should be consulted before using it in a shadow box assembly. The study concluded that non-vented cavities can cause deformation of the glass or back pan, resulting in a compromised appearance5. In these non-vented conditions, the back pans should be sealed to the surrounding framing with flexible material, rather than rigidly attached, to prevent deformation from differential movement and pressure cycling. In vented cavities, baffles should be provided in the vents to reduce the possibility of dust and debris entering the cavity. The final conclusion suggests sealed, desiccated systems as a new standard.

Kaskel and Ceja published a paper that reviews a case study of a hospital project, located in the U.S. Midwest and constructed in 20056. Condensation and ice formation was observed both in the shadow box and in the corners of lights adjacent to the shadow box. The

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back pan insulation was observed to be incomplete in filling some shadow box cells, and the sealing tape was incomplete or poorly adhered to the mullions. The building was designed to maintain interior humidity at a minimum of 30% throughout the winter. Testing indicated that the insulation at the back of the shadow box, in conjunction with venting to the outside (by cutting gaps in the interior glazing seal) reduced the temperature inside the shadow box enough to cause condensation on mullions at vision glass panels adjacent to the shadow box. The high interior humidity levels contributed to this effect.

The stated purpose of another paper was to respond to recent interest in shadow box failures by insurance companies7. Venting the shadow box cavity to the exterior in cold climates can bypass the curtain wall thermal break and create cold mullions surrounding the shadow box. Annealed glass is not suitable for the inner light of the IGU as it may break due to thermal stress caused by high temperatures inside the shadow box cavity. The authors suggest heat-strengthened or tempered glass.

An alternative suggestion is laminated glass, but the interlayer must be suitable to withstand the expected high temperatures. Authors suggest that shadow boxes be vented to the exterior in UK-like climates. When this approach is taken, ventilation openings should be located at the top of the shadow box to maximize the effectiveness in rejecting heat and humidity. The authors state that there is no current guidance on calculating the area of ventilation openings. Ventilated shadow box cavities should not be considered pressure equalized because the openings will be too small to allow the rapid pressure changes that an equalized system requires. A fine mesh or open-cell foam in the ventilation openings will reduce the amount of dust entering the cavity, but will not eliminate all dust and could become clogged and close the ventilation openings.

A technical bulletin suggests that shadow box glass must be heat strengthened to avoid thermal stress failure8. The difference in temperature between the interior of the shadow box and the adjacent vision glass areas may be transferred through the shadow box’s perimeter mullions. In cold climates, this can result in condensation on mullions at vision areas. In hot climates, mullions in vision areas can become hot to the touch due to high temperatures inside the shadow box. Shadow box venting is required by code in Massachusetts. At the perimeter of shadow boxes, horizontal-to-vertical-mullion seals must be full depth to prevent interior air from entering the shadow box cavity around the installed vapor barrier. The shadow box cavity cannot be vented to

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the exterior in face-sealed (four-sided-SSG) systems. If the cavity is generously vented to the exterior, the back pan may be required to resist the same wind pressures as the building exterior. Smaller vents will reduce the wind pressure on the back pan. Residual solvent release from aluminum finishes due to high cavity temperatures is not an issue due to the high application temperatures of these finishes. Other materials in the cavity, including sealants and foam plastic insulation, must be suitable for the expected high temperatures.

If laminated glass is required, venting may be required to keep the cavity temperature below 170°F to prevent damage to the laminate. Any vents to the exterior should be baffled to minimize transmission of dust and debris into the cavity. Fixed connections at the back pan perimeter should be avoided to minimize oil canning due to thermal expansion. Care must be taken with vented, unitized curtain wall sections to ensure that water and debris are not introduced into the cavity when the units are stored on site. Use of solvent-release sealants, such as butyl, acrylic, or acetoxy-cure silicone, is not recommended in the cavity. Silicone, SCR, or EDPM glazing gaskets are recommended. It is recommended to maintain a seal between the shadow box cavity and the building interior8.

Barry and Hartog published a literature review paper that summarizes issues with shadow box design9. The paper discusses measured and speculated maximum temperatures in shadow boxes, with instances well over 100°C cited in Britain and Australia. The authors asserted that the interior temperature of shadow boxes is underestimated. Heat strengthened glass used in IGUs may be weakened against thermal stress fracture with the application of ceramic frit, though only fully opacified panels have been tested. Materials in the shadow box cavity that contain volatiles, like insulation, gaskets and sealants, may off gas in the cavity and leave deposits on the inner surface of the glass. Fire-retardant additives in insulation and glazing tape are thought to have produced iridescent plumes in shadow boxes in Australia. The depth of a shadow box cavity is assumed to have negligible effect on the cavity temperature.

Minimum cavity depth is suggested as the smallest dimension that will prevent the back pan from touching the back of the glass in the most extreme conditions of wind-load glass deflection, temperature-induced outward deformation of the back pan and negative fabrication tolerances. Permanent, whitish encrustations have been observed on the #2 surface of monolithic shadow box glass in Singapore and Australia. The origin and cause of the encrustation is not known9.

Shadow Box Design

Lastly, Vos developed a test method that can be employed during performance mockup testing to confirm adequate vapor equalization to prevent condensation10.

The general idea is to build a performance mockup near the building location and monitor glass surface temperature, air temperature and dew point both inside and outside the shadow box cavity. The author suggested that the testing and monitoring occur for a minimum of three weeks. Plotting all six variables on the same line graph will reveal condensation events where the surface temperature and dew point lines cross. Comparison of the interior and exterior values will confirm if the cavity is vapor equalizing. The testing protocol was implemented on a mockup in a northern-hemisphere climate. Initially, the shadow box was vented to the building interior, resulting in significant condensation in the shadow box. Subsequently, the mockup was modified to seal the connections to the interior and vent to the exterior. The revised venting strategy eliminated all condensation events10.

3.0 MODES OF SHADOW BOX FAILURE

Following a review of the literature referenced in the previous section relating to the design of shadow boxes, the next section identifies major modes of failure and subsequent possible remediation. The review revealed that there are four broad categories of shadow box failure: condensation in the shadow box cavity; dust and debris infiltration into the shadow box cavity; thermal transfer (either excessively hot or cold) from the shadow box cavity to the interior surfaces of surrounding curtain wall mullions; and structural failure of the exterior glass or shadow box back pan.

Condensation can form inside a shadow box cavity when moisture-laden air in the cavity is cooled to the dew point. In cold and temperate climates, winter interior building air is typically warmer and has a higher relative humidity than outside air, so infiltration of interior building air into the cavity can become a source of shadow box condensation. In warmer climates, daytime outdoor air that is introduced into the shadow box can be a source of condensation when temperatures drop at night. Condensation itself is aesthetically objectionable, but tends to be transient and dissipates. It can, however, have long-term consequences that affect shadow box performance and appearance. The condensation can leave visible deposits on the interior surfaces of the shadow box cavity that cannot be easily cleaned. Additionally, the condensation can deposit solvents or particulates from finishes, adhesives or sealants that can deteriorate other finishes and seals inside the cavity.

Since the exterior glass of a shadow box is vision glass, the presence of dust or debris in the cavity is aesthetically objectionable and undesirable. Shadow box cavities are generally inaccessible after they are installed, so dust or debris that gets inside the cavity is difficult and costly to clean or remove. Dust and debris can enter the shadow box cavity during assembly of the units, while they are stockpiled on site, during installation of the curtain wall or by way of cavity vents after the shadow box has been installed.

The shadow box cavity is typically located to the interior of the curtain wall mullion thermal break and, therefore, allows thermal conductivity between the cavity and the interior surfaces of curtain wall mullions at the perimeter of the shadow box. If the shadow box cavity is excessively hot, it can heat the interior surface of adjacent mullions to temperatures that can be painful or scalding in extreme conditions. If the shadow box cavity is excessively cold, surfaces of adjacent mullions that are exposed to the building interior can be cooled below the dew point, causing uncontrolled condensation inside the building.

Excessively high or low pressure inside a sealed shadow box cavity, due to very hot or cold (respectively) air trapped inside the cavity, can deform the shadow box back pan, damage seals or break the exterior glass.

The primary means to combat these failures can be some form of cavity ventilation, or a complete and deliberate lack thereof. Shadow boxes can be vented directly to the exterior; vented indirectly to the exterior by way of the mullion cavities; vented to the building interior; or sealed.

4.0 VENTILATION STRATEGIES 4.1 Ventilation Directly to the Exterior

Shadow box cavity ventilation directly to the exterior is commonly done by leaving gaps in the glazing gaskets of the vision glass and putting porous baffles in the resulting openings. This approach is only possible with a captured system and cannot be done on a structurallyglazed curtain wall. Typical practice is to provide vents in the vertical mullions near the top of the shadow box unit and in the horizontal mullion at the bottom (Figure 2). This arrangement prevents the direct infiltration of liquid water (rain) and insects through the vents and promotes a convective flow of air through the cavity.

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Figure 2: Diagram of shadow box ventilation to the exterior.

There are several potential benefits of venting the cavity directly to the exterior. The direct connection equalizes the pressure between the cavity and the exterior environment, preventing pressure buildup inside the cavity. The introduction of unconditioned exterior air also discourages condensation inside the cavity as long as the flow of air through the cavity is sufficient to ensure that the air inside the cavity has similar temperature and relative humidity to the exterior environment1, 10. In the event that condensation does form inside the cavity, the convective flow of air promotes drying and dissipation of the condensation.

There are, however, potential drawbacks to direct ventilation to the exterior. In temperate or cold climates, the introduction of very cold exterior air into the cavity can

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cool the mullions at the perimeter of the shadow box to a point where uncontrolled condensation can form on mullion surfaces inside the building and result in water damage to adjacent materials7, 8. Exterior air that enters the cavity can also carry particulates that can collect on the inner surfaces of the shadow box. This is of particular concern in sandy or heavily polluted environments5.

Finally, it is very likely that intermittent condensation will occur in any climate that experiences moderate-to-large temperature swings in a short period of time, as with the passing of a cold front or at nightfall. This condensation is likely to dissipate in relatively short order, but is aesthetically objectionable in the meantime and can leave deposits on the cavity surfaces that can accumulate over time.

Shadow Box Design

4.2 Ventilation to Mullion Cavities – Indirect to the Exterior

Ventilation to the mullion cavities is done by providing baffled holes in the vertical mullions bounding the shadow box. In most curtain wall systems, the mullion cavities are used as a weeping system and have holes to the exterior to drain any water that gets inboard of the primary water seal. The weep holes provide a connection between the exterior environment and the mullion cavity and since the shadow boxes are ventilated into the mullion cavity, they have an indirect connection to the exterior.

Indirect ventilation provides pressure relief for and air flow through the shadow box cavity without a direct connection to the exterior, and can introduce very cold air or dust and debris. A small amount of dust may make its way through the mullion cavities and to the shadow box, but the baffled vent holes prevent the vast majority of that dust from entering the cavity. The mullion cavity is typically on the interior side of the curtain wall thermal break, so it will be tempered by the interior environment. The shadow box ventilation air has to pass through this moderately-tempered zone and is, thus, brought closer to the interior building temperature before it is introduced into the shadow box cavity. This tempering mitigates the likelihood that the cavity, and the surrounding mullions, will become excessively hot or cold.

There are no significant drawbacks to this approach, but there two important limitations. First, this approach is impractical in stick-built curtain wall systems due to the difficulty of ensuring complete separation of the interior mullion cavities from the interior building environment. Joinery and assembly of stick-built systems introduce a multitude of potential paths for infiltration of interior building air into the mullion cavity through splices, screw holes or other openings in the mullion walls.

This necessitates the quality control and controlled environment, which is only possible with a factory-assembled, unitized curtain wall system. This has its own challenges. Many unitized curtain wall systems have a water and air barrier at the outboard split mullion joint that is near, or in line with, the plane of the glass (Figure 3). This barrier prevents the mullion cavity from having a direct connection to the exterior. There is, however an inboard split mullion connection which, if not sealed, would provide a direct connection between the mullion cavity and the interior building environment. There are also potential paths for interior air infiltration at the intersections of horizontal and vertical mullions and at stack joints or sills. It is possible to seal these during shop fabrication, but care must be taken by the designer in specifying these requirements and by the manufacturer in the subsequent fabrication. In the absence of a complete seal between the mullion cavities and the building interior, ventilation into the mullion cavity would provide an environmental connection between the shadow box and the interior building environment, which is not desirable (see section 4.3 below.)

Figure 3: Unitized curtain wall split mullion showing the air barriers required for ventilation to the mullion cavity.

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4.3 Ventilation to the Building Interior

Ventilation to the building interior is usually accomplished by leaving gaps between the shadow box back pan/insulation/closure assembly and the adjacent mullions (Figure 4).

There are serious risks in ventilating the shadow box cavity to the building interior, especially in cold or moderate climates. First, the shadow box cavity and its interior surfaces tend to be colder than the interior building environment in the winter. When warm, moisture-laden air from the building interior is allowed into a cooler shadow box cavity, the risk of condensation is very high.

Since the relative humidity of the interior building air will

Figure 4: Shadow box ventilation to the building interior.

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be fairly stable, dissipation of the condensation through introduction of interior building air will likely be slow.

Additionally, the interior building environment is likely to have significant particulate matter in the air that can get into the into the shadow box cavity and leave aesthetically unappealing deposits. The risks of this approach have been demonstrated in performance mockup testing where cold exterior conditions created repeated condensation events10.

The only real benefit of ventilation to the building interior is that it offers pressure relief for the shadow box cavity.

Shadow Box Design

4.4 Sealed Cavity

The final ventilation strategy is not to provide any ventilation at all. In this case, the shadow box cavity is completely sealed from both the interior building environment and the exterior.

The lack of any airflow into or out of the cavity can lead to elevated temperatures and pressures, especially on hot days and at times where there is direct sunlight on the shadow box. Excessive heat can degrade sealants and finishes inside the shadow box cavity to the point where they fail. If a sealed cavity is the chosen solution, the designer must ensure that all finishes, sealants and other materials in, or adjacent to, the shadow box cavity are stable at high temperatures. In similar fashion to the direct ventilation to the exterior, extreme temperatures inside the shadow box cavity can transfer to the mullions bounding the shadow box and result in interior mullion surfaces that are hot, or even scalding, to the touch.

There is some evidence that heat buildup in the cavity can induce elevated pressure inside the shadow box.

The pressure can build to a point where an annealed (rather than heat-strengthened or tempered) glass light can break. There is little evidence of this mode of failure in completed buildings, however, the party responsible for engineering the curtain wall system should calculate potential pressure buildup (based on design criteria) and verify that both the vision glass and the shadow box back pan can withstand anticipated pressures without failure1.

The other major risk of sealing the cavity is that dust, debris or very humid air is trapped inside during the fabrication process. If dust or debris is trapped inside, there is no way to remove it other than disassembling the shadow box (usually from the building exterior). If very humid air is trapped inside the cavity, it can condense during cool weather or at nighttime after installation, leaving condensation and the resultant debris on the inside surfaces of the shadow box. This risk can be mitigated by specifying that the cavity be protected from infiltration of dust, debris and moisture throughout fabrication, delivery and installation. Protection from dust, debris and liquid moisture infiltration is readily achievable with established quality assurance and quality control processes, but the control of humidity requires careful climate control at the fabrication facility that may be difficult for some manufacturers to achieve.

This should be taken into account in the selection of acceptable manufacturers.

5.0 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Having considered the benefits and drawbacks of the ventilation strategies identified above, it is this author’s primary recommendation that shadow box cavities be ventilated indirectly to the exterior through the mullion cavities. This recommendation does come with the caveat that the curtain wall must be a unitized system and that careful specification and fabrication ensure a complete seal between the mullion cavities and the interior building environment and that the shadow box cavity be protected from infiltration of dust, debris and moisture throughout its fabrication, delivery and installation.

If a unitized system is not feasible, or if the chosen unitized system does not allow a complete seal between the mullion cavities and the building interior, the alternative recommendation is to specify a completely sealed shadow box cavity. When specifying a sealed shadow box cavity, it is critical that all materials inside the cavity are suitable for high-temperature applications. It is also recommended that the shadow box glass be tempered or heat strengthened and that the specifications require the curtain wall contractor to determine the highest anticipated temperature inside the cavity and verify the ability of the glass and the back pan to withstand the resultant pressure. Finally, if the shadow box can be anticipated to receive direct sunlight, some consideration should be given to the possibility that the interior surfaces of the bounding mullions can get hot to the touch. It is recommended that the mullions adjacent to the shadow box not be in highly trafficked areas or in locations where they can be touched by children or others who are heat-sensitive.

REFERENCES

[1] Michno, M., (2009). “Analysis and Design of Spandrel and Shadowbox Panels in Unitized Curtain Walls, Proceedings of the Glass Performance Days 2009, Tampere, Finland, June 12-15, pp. 454-460.

[2] Boswell, K., and Walker, J., (2005). “Shadow Boxes – An Architect and Cladding Designers’ Search for Solutions”, Proceedings of the Glass Performance Days 2005, June 17-20, pp. 458-463.

[3] McCowan, ., Brown, M., and Louis, M., (2015).

“Curtain-Wall Designs”, Glass Magazine, April, Retrieved on 10/2018 from https://glassmagazine.com/ article/commercial/curtain-wall-designs.

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[4] Vigener, N., and Brown, M., (2016). “Building Envelope Design Guide – Curtain Walls”, Whole Building Design Guide, National Institute of Building Sciences, Retrieved on 10/2018 from https://www.wbdg.org/ guides-specifications/building-envelope-design-guide/ fenestration-systems/curtain-walls.

[5] Kragh, M., Yee, S., Carbary, L., and McClellan, N., (2014). “Performance of Shadow Boxes in Curtain Wall Assemblies”, Proceedings of the CTBUH 2014 Shanghai Conference, September 16-19, pp. 769-773.

[6] Kaskel, B.., and Ceja, C., (2014). “Case Study Repair of Shadow Box Spandrel Condensation”, in Building Walls Subject to Water Intrusion and Accumulation: Lessons from the Past and Recommendations for the Future, Erdly, J., and Johnson, P., eds., ASTM International, pp. 276-291.

[7] Centre for Window and Cladding Technology, (2014). “Shadow Boxes”, Technical Note No. 94, Bath, United Kingdom.

[8] Apogee Advanced Glazing Group, (2005). “A.A.G.G. ‘Shadow Box’ Design Guidelines”, Technical Bulletin No. 505, May 23.

[9] Barry, C., and Hartog, P., (2015). “Shadow-Box Panels: Risks and Unexpected Outcomes”, Proceedings of the Glass Performance Days 2015, Tampere, Finland, June 24-26, pp. 198-203.

[10] Vos, D., (2015). “Performance Testing of Glazed Cavities to Prevent Condensation and Eventual Glass Corrosion”, Proceedings of the Glass Performance Days 2015, Tampere, Finland, June 24-26, pp. 177-182.

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Designing for Future Mobility

03.

DESIGNING FOR FUTURE MOBILITY: Developing a Framework for the Livable Future City Aaron Knorr, RA, LEED AP, aaron.knorr@perkinswill.com ABSTRACT We are experiencing a technologically-driven shift in the transportation industry, which is transforming the way we move and live in cities. While new mobility options have the potential to profoundly change the way that we plan, design, and build transportation infrastructure, the impacts of these technologies on livability and urban design are not well understood.

This study aimed to define future mobility principles that support livable city goals through a series of proactive, present-day design opportunities for planners, designers and policy-makers. The research was based on an extensive literature review of current trends, projections and impacts in the realm of urban transportation, and livable city criteria. A series of principles and design opportunities, informed by this research, have been identified to help shape the implementation of design decisions towards positive livable city outcomes.

It is critical that we take the initiative to understand and shape the future of mobility in a positive and purposeful way. The conclusion of the study is that we need to re-frame the approach to disruptions in mobility by focusing on people and the type of city we aspire to, and determine how future mobility technologies can help support this vision.

KEYWORDS: autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, transportation, mobility, urban design

1.0 INTRODUCTION

When automobiles were first introduced to cities in the early twentieth century, urban rights-of-way were heterogeneous spaces shared between pedestrians, bicycles, horse-drawn carriages and trolleys. Within just two decades, roadways had been almost completely given over to the new “horseless carriages� and the car had radically changed the way that we inhabit and design our cities and regions— including many impacts that have been detrimental to the human, ecological, experiential and equitable health of our communities.

Today, we are on the threshold of a similarly transformational change in the way we move, and live, in urban areas. Disruptions now underway in urban mobility are likely to usher in the most significant changes to cities that we will see in a generation.

Public officials, planners, engineers and other city builders are recognizing that it is critical to meet these potential impacts head on. What is less clear is how to respond to such an undefined, indeterminate, and unknown set of circumstances. This study evaluates the most important emerging trends in urban mobility, how those shifts are likely to impact the way we design cities, and proposes a set of guiding principles and areas of focus to begin shaping the future of mobility today.

2.0 CURRENT TRENDS IN URBAN MOBILITY

We are witnessing an exponential growth in several technologically-driven shifts in the transportation industry today, each with the potential to dramatically upend the way we get around cities. For the purpose of this study, these trends have been broadly organized into four major categories, as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1: Trends in urban mobility.

2.1 Self-Driving Vehicles

Self-driving vehicles have been getting a lot of attention, capturing the imagination of planners and the public alike. Technology that allows vehicles to navigate themselves, without a human behind the wheel, has been decades in the making1. Over the last five years, autonomous technology has gained significant traction with improvements to sensory and mapping technology, an influx of new industry players, and significant investments across the private and public sectors.

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vehicles on city roads will accelerate in the near term.

In fact most of the largest automobile manufacturers and tech companies have committed to making fully autonomous vehicles available on the market within the next five years2. How soon and to what extent the technology becomes widely available is still very much an open question and will largely depend on the resolution of technological, safety, and regulatory concerns.

2.2 Networked Transportation

Proponents of fully autonomous vehicles suggest a broad array of benefits to society, including reduced mobility costs, greater convenience, and a dramatic reduction in the number of traffic collisions and related fatalities. There is still much debate about how the widespread use of self-driving vehicles might affect road congestion, travel behavior, and settlement patterns resulting from the ability for users to make more productive use of travel time.

Mobile phones, apps, and the vast communication network that supports their use are quickly becoming important tools used for moving around cities. In the same way that these devices have transformed the way that many people consume media, goods, and services, mobility is similarly evolving to become an on-demand service. Decisions about how to get from points A to B are increasingly being made with the assistance of networked devices that also enable users to make payments, compare options, and plan routes.

Today, there are vehicles navigating urban roadways that have achieved various levels of conditional automation—allowing for the vehicle to assume full responsibility for navigation under certain circumstances.

While current applications are largely limited to test pilot projects, it is expected that the number of self-driving

An entire industry of transportation network companies (“TNCs�, e.g.: Lyft, Uber, etc.) has emerged, providing on-demand rides by connecting drivers and passengers via mobile apps. Such services have been steadily gaining in popularity, as seen in Figure 2, particularly in the densest areas of population and employment, and

Designing for Future Mobility

Figure 2: Use of ride hailing services5.

largely for trips that are relatively short in length and duration3. However, studies in cities where ride hailing has become widespread suggest that their use has resulted in an increase in the number of vehicle trips made and distance traveled, often at the expense of public transportation and other shared or active modes4.

The use of networked platforms has also resulted in the creation of immense amounts of data, available in realtime, about how and where trips are made—with great potential for assisting in the planning of transportation services.

The rapid growth in adoption of mobile technologies and their use for planning day-to-day travel is expected to continue and to accelerate with the growth of mobility as a service (MaaS), which has the potential to link different modes of travel together on the same digital platform to integrate movement and ease of payment across many different mobility providers (both public and private) with a single account as an on-demand or subscription service.

2.3 Shared Mobility

Largely as a result of the benefits offered by networked access to mobility options, an increase in the use of shared transportation modes is making it more convenient and more affordable for many people to access

mobility services on an as-need basis instead of through ownership. This is most clearly observable in the emergence of car sharing, bike sharing, dockless scooters, and ride hailing services in many cities and the uptake in these shared modes for trips6.

The shift towards shared instead of privately owned transportation modes offers significant opportunities for city planning. While privately owned vehicles sit unused roughly 95 percent of the time, shared modes result in a much more efficient utilization of a vehicle fleet with a corresponding reduction in the number of cars and storage space needed to deliver the same number of trips within cities.

Vehicle sharing programs have been most successful in densely populated areas serviced by multiple transportation options. For users that do not rely on driving daily, vehicle sharing has proven to be a less costly alternative to car ownership and operation7. Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been a general trend across most age demographics towards fewer people obtaining a driver’s license, and a lower likelihood to purchase a car than in the past (Figure 3). Studies indicate that people who participate in vehicle sharing programs are likely to sell their vehicle or delay purchasing one, and tend to use public transportation more often while relying less on driving overall8.

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Figure 3: Car loan originations per capita, by age9.

2.4 Electric Propulsion

The movement of people and goods today are predominantly powered by petroleum-based fuels, which account for a significant percentage of greenhouse gas emissions in North America. However, steady improvements in the range and performance of electric vehicles have accelerated a global shift towards cleaner forms of mobility.

The overlapping of these disruptive transportation trends will likely amplify the impacts on how we move around the cities. How these trends will continue to change and ultimately interact with the built environment is a question that many experts are now trying to understand and predict.

While electric vehicles represent less than one percent of total vehicles purchased, their total number of sales has gone from less than 100,000 five years ago, to over 2 million globally in 2016, including a 60 percent yearover-year increase in the last year10. If coupled with improvements in the broader energy grid, these shifts could dramatically reduce carbon emissions from the transportation industry and improve air quality in cities.

3.0 PROJECTIONS

The shift to electric vehicles will likely be accelerated by recent national commitments to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the stated intent by many countries to phase out the internal combustion engine—the Netherlands and Norway by 2025, India by 2030, Britain and France by 204011. China has also announced that plans are underway to implement a ban on gaspowered vehicles. These global trends, along with the pressure on major automobile manufacturers to address this coming demand, are expected to usher in a shift to North American markets as well.

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The next phase of the study was to explore how these changes may evolve over time, and how they might ultimately impact the way we live and move around cities.

The existing body of research suggests a wide range of projections for how and when these disruptions to urban mobility will reach critical thresholds. What is clear is that the impacts on infrastructure and travel behavior will be profound. Projections for any of these disruptions tend to fall into either an evolutionary or revolutionary track, depending on the uptake of new technologies and the various political and regulatory obstacles which will impact these trends, as shown in Figure 4.

The reality is that the adoption of these technologies is likely to continue to be incremental, with an extended and perhaps indefinite overlap between current practices and various transformational outcomes.

While it is impossible to know with certainty what form these transformations will take in the future, there is

Designing for Future Mobility

Figure 4: Estimated growth rate of automated mobility in top markets12.

some emerging consensus around potential impacts of various scenarios that is useful in developing a strategy for planning.

3.1 Adoption Timeline

When it comes to self-driving vehicles, mobility companies expect to have fully automated vehicles operating as taxis on city streets as early as 2018, with selfdriving vehicles hitting the private market within the next 3 years, and with the potential for a completely autonomous vehicle fleet sometime after 2050 (Figure 5). Of course, the rate of adoption is largely dependent on highly variable factors such as economic, legal and legislative obstacles, as well as general public acceptance. The adoption of these technologies will certainly be uneven across different types of cities and demographics13.

Likewise, it is expected that vehicle sharing and ride hailing will continue to accelerate as a significant mode for urban mobility. Coupled with the emergence of selfdriving technology, shared modes could account for the majority of all trips as soon as 203514. Again, a myriad of external factors are likely to impact the extent to which shared mobility becomes a predominant mode of transport.

3.2 Cost of Travel

It is largely believed that coupling autonomous operation and vehicle sharing will reduce the cost per mile of travel to below the cost for personally operated vehicles or even public transportation today14 (Figure 6). More affordable options for mobility could certainly benefit many people. However there are also risks, depending on the types of mobility that are prioritized.

Beyond the financial cost of mobility, another potential impact of autonomous vehicles is a decrease in the perceived “cost” of time for users. Throughout human history, people have generally allocated themselves a relatively consistent budget of time (roughly one hour) to travel each day— known as Marchetti’s Constant15. This has influenced the physical extent of cities over time as new technologies increase the distance that can be covered in a set period of time. Self-driving capabilities could not only increase travel speeds on freeways due to networking and more efficient use of roadways, but also challenge the assumption that time spent in transit is generally “unproductive” time for the driver. Because time previously spent behind the wheel could instead be used for work, entertainment or even sleep, the disincentive to make long trips on a regular basis would be greatly diminished. This could certainly result in an increase in the sprawl and auto-dependence of urban areas, encouraging people to live further away from the places they work and play.

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Figure 5: Projected automobile miles driven, by mode type14.

Figure 6: Projected cost per mile breakdown, by future state14.

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3.3 Vehicle Miles Traveled

It is well understood that decreasing costs, coupled with increased convenience, tends to induce additional demand for a service—this has been true across many economic studies, as well as in many previous innovations in transportation16. With decreases in the cost of mobility, as seen in Figure 6, and the replacement of trips formerly made by public transport, the resulting shift of more trips to low-occupancy vehicles would certainly result in an increase in congestion compared to the current condition. The trend towards an increase in vehicle miles traveled due to the availability of ride hailing services has already been well documented in cities such as New York and San Francisco, where up to half of new congestion and travel delays are attributed to TNCs17. This condition could be exacerbated further by the fact that many people who are not able to drive themselves today, including children and the elderly, would also have increased access to mobility with the introduction of self-driving vehicles.

Even if a large percentage of automobiles remain privately owned, parking demand is still likely to drop though less dramatically than in a fully shared scenario.

Autonomous navigation and networked parking data would allow vehicles to utilize existing parking much more efficiently while still offering door-to-door service for passengers.

3.5 Public Safety

Autonomous vehicles are largely expected to result in an increase in the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT), between 5 percent and 60 percent compared with today, more than offsetting any potential roadway efficiencies that autonomous vehicles may offer18.

One of the primary benefits touted for self-driving vehicles is the expectation that they will result in much safer roadways, with the introduction of automated detection and crash avoidance technologies. The impacts on public safety could be significant. Today 1.2 million people around the world are killed annually as a result of automobile-related deaths20. The vast majority of these accidents are caused by human error that could theoretically be eliminated through automation. Studies suggest that between 80 percent and 90 percent of collisions and fatalities could be avoided with widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles21. The benefits could be seen most clearly among the most vulnerable street users, pedestrians and bicyclists. Making streets safer for walking and biking would result in the additional benefit of greater public health offered by active modes of transportation.

3.4 Parking Requirements

3.6 Greenhouse Gas Emissions

A significant shift to shared vehicles could have profound impacts on the amount of space that is required for storing cars. While cars today spend the vast majority of every day sitting in a parking spot, simulations have shown that if shared vehicles were to replace privately owned for all trips, only 10 percent of the existing vehicle fleet would be required, with a corresponding reduction in the number of parking spaces needed in cities19. Given that automobile-related uses make up around a quarter of the total land area in North American cities, reducing the space needed for storing cars would free up vast amounts of land for other uses such as redevelopment and regeneration of green space.

The extent to which shared self-driving vehicles become the dominant form of personal mobility is still very much an open question. While shared modes have continued to trend upward, it is not yet clear to what degree self-driving technology may accelerate or reverse these trends; or to what extent most people would be willing to forego the convenience of private ownership.

Studies suggest that the impact of future mobility on climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by half—or result in a 100 percent increase— depending on the factors that come to dominate urban transportation18. Such a broad range of possible outcomes speaks to the uncertainty and wide range of variables that are at play, including impacts on congestion, fuel efficiency, crash avoidance, and right-sizing vehicles.

Of these factors, the most significant impact on carbon emissions is the potential trend towards increased vehicle miles traveled. If coupled with a reliance on lowoccupancy vehicles, whether shared or owned, this could dramatically increase the negative environmental impacts of the transportation sector without the implementation of significant changes to fuel sources and efficiency for vehicles. The extent to which electric vehicles and clean energy grids expand, as well as shifting more trips to more efficient multi-occupancy vehicles or active transportation, will be critical in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and the broader environmental impacts of mobility in the future.

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3.7 Privatization

One of the significant differences between current and past disruptions in mobility is a shift from public to private participation in the delivery of infrastructure. While public works projects invested in roadway and mass transit infrastructure have shaped much of the transportation landscape we see in cities today, it is information technologies, digital platforms, and start-up platforms that are playing an ever greater role in changing the way that we move today22.

The integration and coordination of public and private sector roles highlights a unique shift that will be critical to the success of implementation. Planners will need to balance the role of the public in managing social and economic equity, with the cost and service efficiencies that are likely to emerge from the private sector.

Planning for changes to transportation will also be challenged by working across multiple jurisdictions and different levels of public sector governance to achieve coordinated solutions. Access to data across public and private sectors, and the ability to process and synthesize that information, will be critical to informing policy and shaping positive change.

4.0 LIVABLE CITY GOALS

How will these changes affect the built environment and impact the livability of our cities? In order to formulate principles that respond to these mobility trends, it was

Figure 7: Livable city goals.

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important to first define what we mean by a livable and sustainable city. For the purpose of this study, the following criteria have been used (Figure 7), which include broadly accepted goals and ambitions of cities today to inform the way we might evaluate values and decisions about the future of mobility and urban design23, 24: Social Equity • Provide access to high quality and affordable transportation for all.

• Ensure access to green space, schools, jobs and daily needs for all.

• Promote the exchange of goods, services and ideas.

Human Habitat • Foster a vibrant public realm that supports a broad range of outdoor activities.

• Support compact and complete neighborhoods that minimize our impact on natural habitat while promoting community and active mobility.

• Design cities that are safe and accessible for people of all ages and abilities.

Environmental • Prioritize transportation and infrastructure that has a low impact on the environment.

• Provide a functioning network of ecological networks and services.

• Support resilient environments that can adapt and respond to ecological changes.

Designing for Future Mobility

5.0 FUTURE MOBILITY PRINCIPLES

Future mobility will be highly disruptive to cities--for better or for worse. How we collectively design for that change will have a profound effect on capitalizing on opportunities and mitigating challenges. It will be critical for those interested in the future of cities to be clear about the type of city that is desirable and the values that will enable us to achieve that vision.

What should designers and planners advocate for given the broad range of possible outcomes, opportunities, and risks inherent in each of the trends that are shaping mobility? In order to answer this fundamental question, livable city goals were evaluated against future mobility trends to inform a values-based approach to guide decision-making, urban design, and policy. The following principles were identified as fundamental to achieving livable city goals (Figure 8): 1.

2.

3.

4.

Fundamental to all of these principles is a people-first approach—focusing on how we move people, not vehicles; creating social space instead of storing cars; giving people choice and promoting healthy lifestyles; and prioritizing modes that result in a cleaner and more sustainable environment.

By adopting these key principles, we believe that there is the potential to reduce the amount of space needed to operate and store vehicles, while increasing the capacity to move more people throughout our cities. The outcome will be healthier cities that realize a significant reduction in carbon emissions while creating meaningful space for people to move, interact, and connect.

Make It Shared Prioritize Multi-Occupancy Vehicles Put Active Transportation First Incentivize Low Carbon.

Figure 8: Future mobility principles.

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5.1 Make it Shared

5.2 Prioritize Multi-Occupancy Vehicles

When vehicles are shared instead of privately owned, more space is made available for other uses. The average vehicle today sits unused 95 percent of the time, demanding an enormous amount of space in cities to store cars that sit idle25. Studies suggest that for every car share or rideshare vehicle on the road, as many as ten private vehicles are either unloaded or not purchased, (Figure 9)26. Given that road and parking infrastructure take up around 30 percent of the area of most cities, there is a great opportunity to convert much of this space to higher-and-better uses that support livability.

Roadway capacity is a limited resource in every city, with the amount of space allocated per user having a direct impact on congestion and travel delays.

Transportation policies should favor shared modes of all types over private ownership as a way to reduce the total number of vehicles in cities.

Car sharing--as well as non-vehicular shared modes such as bicycles, electric scooters, and personal mobility devices--can also effectively improve the range and attractiveness of high-capacity transit when co-located with rail and bus exchanges. This can further reduce demand for road and parking space in cities while transferring additional trips to less carbon-intensive modes of transportation.

Figure 9: Displacement of private vehicles by carsharing26.

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Transportation policies should always prioritize high occupancy vehicles while supplementing public mass transportation through shared and self-driving modes.

Even in a scenario where vehicles are shared, if ridehailing or car share trips still tend to be made in singleoccupancy vehicles, cities could face a significant increase in congestion and greenhouse gas emissions19.

Sharing or self-driving mobility on its own does little to address this problem, especially if accompanied by an increase in vehicle miles traveled—which is why prioritizing multi-occupancy vehicles becomes even more important for future mobility. Public and active transportation modes will continue to be the most efficient, space-effective ways to utilize scarce road space now and into the future (Figure 10). Pairing shared vehicles with a quality, high-capacity public transport network has also been shown in simulations to have a significant decrease in the number of parking spots required and minimizing delays during peak travel times19.

Figure 10: Road space requirements, by mode.

Designing for Future Mobility

5.3 Put Active Transportation First

5.4 Incentivize Low Carbon

A key principle of a high-quality mobility network is to provide people choices in how they move around cities. Resiliency—not becoming overly reliant on a single mode or supplier of mobility—is a critical step and requires a consideration of both cost and distribution of access to multiple modes. Beyond furthering choice for residents, cities realize an enormous public health benefit and individual well-being by prioritizing active forms of transportation—walking, bicycling, etc. Welldocumented benefits include reductions in obesity, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and overall mortality rates27.

The impacts of climate change are one of the most profound challenges that we will face over the next generation. Transportation continues to play a significant role in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants released into the atmosphere—accounting for between 20 and 30 percent of all emissions we produce (Figure 12)28. Carbon emissions are affected by fuel efficiency and energy source, which have been improving over time through improved fuel efficiency and the increase in electric vehicles. But emissions are also a product of the number of trips and miles traveled, which continue to increase globally and are expected to do so into the future as a result of changes in mobility.

Users of active transport are also the most vulnerable users of the street, resulting in a disproportionately high percentage of fatalities and serious injuries on roadways. It is critical to implement the design of routes that are safe and inviting for all users (Figure 11). This means fundamentally limiting speeds and giving priority and maximum visibility to people over vehicles in the design of streets.

Studies have shown that automation of a vehicle fleet could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half, or nearly double them, depending on whether clean electric or carbon-based fuel comes to dominate18. Promoting more efficient multi-occupancy trips and no-carbon active mobility will also need to play a significant role in lowering greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

Decisions around future mobility should put active transportation first by considering a broad range of users and prioritizing pedestrians and bicyclists over private roadway users where different modes come in contact.

Figure 11: Prioritization of transportation modes.

Policy must aggressively incentivize low carbon forms of mobility and improve the infrastructure needed to make them a convenient and affordable choice for most users.

Figure 12: CO2 emissions, by sector28.

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6.0 DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES

The next step of the research was to apply these future mobility principles to a range of urban design typologies. These design ideas and the typologies into which they are grouped in no way represent the full range of opportunities available to planners and designers considering the future of mobility. They are instead meant to be provocations that speak to key conditions found in many urban areas. They also represent ideas that could be tested immediately in existing urban areas and new developments. One of the key lessons from these examples is that anticipating changing mobility technologies should not be a matter of wait-and-see, but rather an active re-making already underway in cities around principles of livability, asking how changes in mobility can help to achieve the goals that have been set out.

Ultimately, we believe that a proactive design approach is the most effective response to an open-ended design problem filled with uncertainty and a broad range of possible outcomes. If properly leveraged, current disruptions in mobility can be powerful tools towards enabling a much more livable city in the future. The opportunities identified here also come, uniformly, from a relatively simple premise underlying future mobility principles: put people first in the design of cities.

Figure 13: Reimagining parking.

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6.1 Off-Street Parking and Buildings

Parking for automobiles takes up an enormous percentage of land area in cities today—valuable space that could instead be leveraged for housing, open space or other uses that contribute to the livability of cities. With a shift to more shared modes of mobility, there is an opportunity to recapture much of the parking space in cities for more valuable purposes.

We can start by re-thinking off-street parking, first in temporary ways to support interim events such as popup food vendors and markets, and ultimately redeveloping underutilized surface parking for higher-and-better uses (Figure 13).

Parking that is built as part of new developments should be considered in the context of a future in which demand is much lower, requiring designers to consider a flexible approach that allows for different uses over time. All new parking should also incorporate electric charging capability in anticipation of near-term changes in power source for vehicles.

The most effective strategy may be limiting the amount of parking that we build today, and utilizing existing and

Designing for Future Mobility

future parking space in the most efficient way possible.

In the same way that shared vehicles offer the benefit of reduced parking space requirements, sharing parking stalls among different users makes better use of a limited resource. Because parking demands vary over time and over the course of a day, networked and shared district parking can increase effective parking capacity without increasing supply. Reducing parking requirements for new developments also has the added benefit of reducing the construction costs and ultimately the cost of living if parking is decoupled from housing.

Finding ways to reduce, re-use and think creatively about how and where vehicles are stored means more space for the types of uses that are fundamental to livability: more and less-expensive housing, more public space, and more recreational space for people.

6.2 Curb and Sidewalk Zones

The threshold between the roadway and building frontages has evolved to become a hard line between the realm of the pedestrian and that of the automobile. Demand for the curb zone is likely to change as we move into the future of mobility—less space for parking, more demand for pick-up and drop-off zones, and greater opportunities for expanding spaces for people.

As we look forward to a future where parking space is less in demand for vehicles, but drop-off zones may become more important, we should think about designing curb space for ultimate flexibility, allowing for adaptation over time. An important first step includes the introduction of people-first spaces—parklets, cafe seating, green space, etc.—as a way of staking a claim for an improved public realm within valuable street space that may become redundant in the near future.

It will become increasingly important to put people first at crosswalks and other intersections between different modes. Particularly in a self-driving dominant future, there may be pressure to create separations between people and roadways to ensure the most efficient flow of networked vehicles is not disturbed by the unpredictable behavior of pedestrians and bicyclists (Figure 14).

In a people-first model, pedestrians should be given priority at crossings and wherever different modes intersect.

Changes in mobility will transform the way in which we think about and utilize the threshold between street and sidewalk in cities. As these changes evolve, the emphasis must be on prioritizing the types of uses, such as space for people, bikes, and high-occupancy vehicles that will support livable city principles.

Figure 14: Reimagining curb and sidewalk zones.

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6.3 Transit Exchanges

Public transit plays an essential role in freeing up roadway capacity, providing mobility choice for many travelers, and reducing the environmental impacts of transportation in large cities across North America. As we enter a future including automation and shared mobility, the role of high quality, high capacity mass transit will only become more important in delivering these benefits to urban areas.

Transit stations tend to be stand-alone structures today.

As part of a new shared mobility ecosystem we need to start thinking of transit exchanges as hubs for the daily life of a city and region. This means designing transit stations that provide easy and intuitive links to a broad range of first and last mile transportation options for users— including bicycles, shared vehicle links, and the integration of places to work and live that make exchanges destinations in and of themselves (Figure 15).

Figure 15: Reimagining transit exchanges.

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It will also become increasingly important to share dynamic information about these various mobility options and integrate those options in a seamless way through the hub. As the transportation system becomes more “networked�, transit hubs will play a central role in facilitating connections between public and private modes.

While automation and shared services offer the potential to revolutionize on-demand transit services and provide critical first and last connections within the transport network, high capacity corridors served by public transit will be essential to alleviate congestion from an overreliance on low occupancy on-demand services.

Without a vital high capacity transit system, it will be exceedingly difficult to deliver high functioning transportation within a livable city context in the future. Investing in and seamlessly integrating transportation nodes into communities is a crucial step in building a sustainable mobility future.

Designing for Future Mobility

6.4 Streets

City streets serve a broad range of functions and come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Today, the vast majority of street space is dedicated to the automobile—however the future of mobility will be about using public rights-of-way for a broad range of public uses, and focusing on increasing capacity through the promotion of high occupancy modes.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to redesigning roadways for future mobility. There are different opportunities inherent in the many various street types, from high capacity transit corridors and arterials; to underutilized residential streets and laneways.

A key consideration in roadway design will be reallocating road space in support of the most efficient modes available—more space for high capacity automated transit and active transportation (Figure 16). In this way, existing rights-of-way will be able to carry as many or more people per hour as today, but using less overall space.

New York’s Times Square is a great example of enacting people-first streets in an incremental way. The intersection was closed down to traffic, temporarily and relatively inexpensively at first, to test and monitor potential impacts. What planners and engineers found was that there was a huge demand for this type of public space in the city, resulting in improved foot traffic and retail activity as well as benefits for improving traffic congestion in the immediate neighborhood29.

Another example that is currently being enacted in Barcelona is the “superblock”, termed by Salvador Rueda. The concept involves focusing vehicular traffic on main arterial streets, freeing up streets within these larger blocks as people-first places that can accommodate vehicles under certain circumstances or at limited speeds30.

The fundamental principle for future mobility street design is that the street should be considered first and foremost as a place for celebrating and moving people, not just vehicles.

Figure 16: Reimagining transit corridors.

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7.0 CONCLUSION

The intent of the study was to understand the potential impacts of future mobility technologies on the design of cities and define design principles that, when applied to design and planning decisions, would best support livable city goals.

A key conclusion of the research is that in order to achieve the best outcomes, we need to re-frame the approach to changes in urban mobility by focusing on people and the type of city we aspire to; then asking how future mobility technologies can help support this vision. Technological disruptions are highly unlikely to improve the equity, sustainability, and environmental quality of cities on their own. Rather, it will be critical that designers and planners understand and evaluate these trends while taking steps to proactively shape the future of mobility in a positive and purposeful way by implementing design changes that support livable city principles.

Changes in mobility already underway serve as a call to action for all of us—we each have an important role to play in shaping this future through design, planning, engineering, and broader behavioral shifts. It is important to remember that the future impact of these trends are not predetermined—rather mobility technologies are a tool which can be leveraged to achieve desirable outcomes. A more livable and sustainable future city is most likely to be achieved by focusing on a principled and people-first approach to re-shaping mobility.

Acknowledgments

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[3] San Francisco County Transportation Authority.

“TNCs Today: Data Explorer”, Retrieved on 11/2018 from http://tncstoday.sfcta.org.

[4] Clewlow, R., and Mishra, G., (2017). “Disruptive Transportation: The Adoption, Utilization, and Impacts of Ride-Hailing in the United States”, Report, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, Research Report UCD-ITS-RR-17-07.

[5] Schaller Consulting, (2017). “Unsustainable: The Growth of App-Based Ride Services and Traffic, Travel and the Future of New York City”, Report, Retrieved on 11/2018 from http://schallerconsult.com/rideservices/ unsustainable.pdf.

[6] Shaheen, S., (2015). “Shared Mobility: Reshaping America’s Travel Patterns”, University of California Berkeley, Transportation Sustainability Research Center.

[7] Shaheen, S., Chan, N., Bansal, A., and Cohen, A., (2015). “Shared Mobility: Definitions, Industry Developments, and Early Understanding”, Report, University of California Berkeley, Transportation Sustainability Research Center, Retrieved on 11/2018 from http:// innovativemobility.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ SharedMobility_WhitePaper_FINAL.pdf.

[8] Feignon, S., and Murphy, C., (2016). “Shared Mobility and the Transformation of Public Transit”, Report, Shared-Use Mobility Center, Retrieved on 11/2018 from https://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/APTA-Shared-Mobility.pdf.

This research was made possible by a researcher-inresidence grant by the Vancouver office of Perkins and Will. Researcher-in-residence review committee: Enrico Dagostini, Jeff Doble, Yehia Madkour, Andrew Thomson, and Kathy Wardle. Collaborators at Nelson\ Nygaard: Terra Curtis and Joshua Karlin-Resnick.

[9] Cortright, J., (2016). “On the Road Again?”, City Observatory, Retrieved on 11/2018 from http://cityobservatory.org/on-the-road-again-2/.

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Designing for Future Mobility

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04.

Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices: Exploring Living Challenge, Mixed-Use, and High-Rise Building Design Spaces John Haymaker, PhD, AIA, LEED AP, john.haymaker@perkinswill.com Christopher Meek, AIA, IES, cmeek@uw.edu Devin Kleiner, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, david.kleiner@perkinswill.com Rob Pena, rbpena@uw.edu Heather Burpee, burpeeh@uw.edu Weston Norwood, LEED AP BD+C, weston.norwood@gmail.com ABSTRACT This article reports on an ongoing academic and professional collaboration to develop and test computational, performance-based design methods, and to discover and develop design talent skilled in using them. We used the specific experiential, environmental, and economic challenges of mixed-use high-rise Living Building projects in Seattle as a context for exploration. We leveraged Perkins and Will’s Design Space Construction (DSC) performance-based computational framework, and University of Washington curricular initiatives. The collaboration achieved several outcomes, including: advanced development of DSC Workflows and adapted them to the Living Building, high-rise, and University of Washington research contexts; explored how to teach these methods, and to apply them in the creative programming and form finding processes; discovered constraints and opportunities in living high-rise building design spaces; and developed talent capable of executing these methods, and transforming our industry and organizations.

KEYWORDS: education, performance, design spaces, living building, high-rise

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Building design processes are becoming more performance-based, and computer-supported. In this context, how would you educate and organize teams to leverage computation to maximize design performance?

Clients and regulatory agencies are asking designers to meet a broadening set of more restrictive, sometimes conflicting environmental, economic, and experiential performance criteria. For example, the city of Seattle adopted the unique Living Building Pilot Program (LBPP)1, which incentivizes aggressive energy and water-use reductions, and the selection of healthy materials in exchange for additional height and floor area ratio (FAR).

The city also developed the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) and Mandatory Housing Af-

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fordability (MHA)2 program that requires developers to either build a certain number of affordable homes within their projects or make a one-time payment into an affordable housing fund. The potential financial benefits and risks are driving the market for developers to more frequently ask architects to consider LBPP, HALA, and integrate more performance-based criteria into their design processes.

Design is an exploration and decision-making process.

It starts with a constrained, but still infinite space of possible solutions. Designers work, within the resources they have available, to explore and reduce this space, making, and sometimes re-making decisions, until they discover a solution that satisfies objectives. Integrated performance-based design is a more iterative, collab-

Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices

orative, and information-rich design process, targeted at meeting or exceeding specific environmental, economic, and experiential performance criteria. Designers need to carefully define criteria, generate and analyze alternatives, weigh and interpret this data, and make many interrelated decisions. Those teams who can do this most effectively and efficiently will be able to create and search better design spaces, and discover better design alternatives.

Digital design technologies that facilitate performancebased design generation and analysis processes are key components of integrated design. The software industry is actively creating tools that can help architects generate spaces of design alternatives, and analyze how well these designs meet various performance metrics. It is possible to model and receive feedback on the energy, daylight, thermal comfort, acoustics, view, cost and other implications of a design decision. In the previous issue of this journal, Aksamija and Brown reviewed many of these technologies, and their ability to integrate with parametric design software3.

However, industry and academia have pretty much left design teams to their own devices when integrating these tools and metrics into professional decision-making processes. In practice, architects often give analysis functions to consultants, and delay applying them until later stages of validation to keep process costs low. Even when consultants and designers are on the same team, technical, transactional, and contractual barriers inhibit efficient construction and exploration of performancebased design spaces. The LBPP and HALA constrain the design space to assure solutions are environmentally high performing and socially responsible. They do not address all of the economic and experiential factors of design. Large-scale commercial and institutional projects are complex, fast moving, and each is unique in some way. Project teams therefore need to flexibly formulate, sequence, and iterate through design spaces and make and communicate decisions quickly.

The formulaic nature of computation often conflicts with the desire to be novel and flexible. Project teams need methods to more efficiently communicate about and integrate performance goals, generate, analyze, and explore design spaces of alternatives, and make and communicate multidisciplinary, performance-based decisions.

To address this need, Haymaker, Bernal, et al.4 synthesized Design Space Construction (DSC)—a framework of processes and tools that support teams to construct and explore Design Spaces. Design Spaces are models

that capture and relate the important information in a decision including the teams, objectives, alternatives, impacts and value. DSC implements Design Spaces with visual scripting environments to allow teams to flexibly connect and adapt processes that help them construct and explore unique design spaces. Perkins and Will is actively testing the framework and infrastructure, through iterative development and validation in professional projects and university classes. The challenge is now training designers to use these methods, and understanding how to deploy them most efficiently and effectively. This begins, at least in part, with how we educate architects.

Deutsch5 asks: “Should working with data be introduced into the college curriculum? Or will there be better results and increased impact if those in the profession and industry address data use in practice?” A reasonable concern is that young designers may get so used to working with data that they could miss opportunities to develop and exercise critical thinking. Understanding how best to integrate performance analysis into architectural curriculum is an active area of inquiry. Several new topics emerge including building performance simulation, integrated design process methods, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Some universities are exploring applications of rigorous performance-based design optimization methods in seminar courses6,7, but serious application of performance-based tools in the design studio remains relatively uncommon. Digital analyses are generally relegated to support courses in the environmental controls, structures, computation, or materials and methods areas of the curriculum. It is largely up to individual students to transfer and apply the knowledge and design methods from these other courses to their design project in the studio.

In a reflection on teaching a studio that included structural engineering students as core design team member, Nichols8 discusses the integration of “engineering thought” with “architecture thought”, using Bloom’s Taxonomy9 to identify levels of thinking at the intersection of analysis and synthesis. Different strategies for the integration of this knowledge emerge. Some establish consultancy-type, collaborative relationships to include engineering thinking into the design process through subject matter experts in allied disciplines10.

Others explore teaching the use of simulation tools by architecture students themselves11. Gallas12 discusses advanced integrative design methods incorporating analysis, implementation and experimentation phases—adapted to pedagogical architectural design context.

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Oxman13 hypothesizes that a unique and distinctive model of creativity and innovation called Parametric Design Thinking (PDT) is emerging. PDT is an evolutionary process of explorative design of the parametric schema. The evolution from typological thinking to topological thinking in creative design, she argues, is one of the most distinctive changes in design thinking in the design disciplines. Deutsch concludes, supported by multiple interviews with leading technologists from practice, that the need for more emphasis and research in academia on this question. This understanding comes down to not only how, but also when, one becomes prepared to integrate data in a way that efficiently informs and optimizes design decisions.

To explore the emerging computational and performance-based paradigms our industry is grappling with, the University of Washington Department of Architec-

ture and Perkins and Will teamed with developer Martin Selig Partners, consulting engineer WSP, and faculty in the University of Washington’s Department of Construction Management to deliver a research studio and linked seminar aimed at confronting these curricular and project delivery challenges. First, we describe the emerging performance-based design practice context that motivates this work. Next, we introduce the Perkins and Will DSC platform, and its adaptations to the Seattle high-rise context. We then outline the UW curriculum and the creation of research-based seminars and design studios to teach and explore performance-based, computer-enhanced design processes. We describe how students defined, managed and explored design spaces to inform creative processes and decisions like those shown in Figure 1. The article concludes with implications for practice and research.

Figure 1: Student design using performance concerns to shape the building form. (Image: Elham Soltani, Xiaoxi Jiao, Farhana Haque).

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2.0 PERFORMANCE-BASED DESIGN PRACTICE

The LBPP has the opportunity to drive architectural design firms toward a performance-based design practice. With an increased awareness in the development community of the potential to gain additional height and FAR there is great value for developers to team with architects who are able to assess quickly the viability to pursue the LBPP and collaborate with contractors and consultants to provide performance and cost metrics.

The emerging generation of developers who value the economic and environmental benefits of sustainable design will increasingly be looking for architecture firms that are advancing their practice to integrate performance-based design.

The building market in Seattle is currently experiencing a significant growth of new construction attracting developers from the around the world. While the LBPP provides incentives for developers, the project schedule frequently requires a fast track design and construction timeline. Developers and design teams also weigh their decision-making processes to avoid unknown factors. It is critical that the design process quickly and accurately assess opportunities for complying with the LBPP. Currently, most design teams do not have the resources nor software tools to provide the necessary analysis within the limited time available.

The complexity of the decision making process is compounded by the fact that there are alternative paths of compliance to be evaluated for complying with the LBPP. These compliance paths have requirements from both the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI)14 and the International Living Future Institute (ILFI)15. SDCI requires that the energy use is reduced 25 percent below the Seattle energy code and that all non-potable water uses such as toilet flushing and irrigation come from non-potable water sources such as storm water or treated greywater. ILFI requires that the project achieve Petal Certification for the Living Building Challenge. This entails achieving three of the seven following categories: Energy, Water, Materials, Place, Beauty, Equity, Health and Happiness. One of the three needs to be either Energy, Water, or Materials.

The selection of the optimal compliance path requires an analysis based on the specific site and building program.

As the construction industry fluctuates between periods of rapid growth and recession, it is critical for architecture firms to strengthen those aspects of their practice

that will continue to provide benefit to clients when there is heightened competition for limited projects. For example, providing a client with the solar potential of their site and multiple energy efficiency measures for reducing utility costs could be a differentiator in an interview and separate the firm from their competition.

The more quickly and accurately design teams can calculate the metrics, the more widespread these services can spread throughout the practice. Current practice, based on a fragmented delivery model and ineffective use of technology, is not meeting this challenge. Design teams do not clearly define or effectively explore high-rise design spaces16. Arguably, the most resilient and successful design practices in the long term will be those that invest in and advance their performancebased design practice.

3.0 DESIGN SPACE CONSTRUCTION

Perkins and Will is researching methods to enable teams to construct and explore better design spaces, and to understand how these methods impact the design process and outcome. To address these questions, the firm developed the DSC framework. Synthesized from concepts in design and decision theory and computational design methodologies, DSC guides teams through an integrated set of decision-making processes. Problem Formulation–where Decision Makers assemble teams and establish objectives and process; Alternative Generation–where Designers create a space of alternatives; Impact Assessment–where Experts understand, environmental, and economic performance; and Value Assessment–where Decision Makers weigh priorities and analyze information to make and communicate decisions. Figure 2 describes the process supported by the DSC framework, which Haymaker et al.4 define in detail.

The goal of DSC is to help a team construct and explore a Design Space. Figure 3 illustrates much of the information contained in a Design Space, described in a Parallel Coordinate Plot17. Built to support a particular decision, it contains the teams involved in a decision, the (environmental, economic, and experiential) objectives to be considered, a list of the alternatives (sometimes in the thousands), important design variables that characterize those alternatives, and the performance of each alternative on each objective. These numbers can be combined and weighted to reflect a Stakeholder’s values. In this way, it is possible to order all alternatives, from worst to first from that Stakeholder’s perspectives.

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Figure 2: DSC formalizes a set of concepts and processes to help design teams construct and explore Design Spaces.

Figure 3: A Parallel Coordinates Plot describes much of the important information and relationships in a Design Space.

In more detail, the DSC methodology begins by guiding student and professional design teams to build their organization, and formulate the problem. In the context of this Seattle high-rise, this means understanding the potential residential, office, and commercial occupants that the developer and project teams seek to serve. They then identify the Gatekeepers, including key members of the city of Seattle planning and building departments, and the International Living Futures Institute. They also determine who the specific Decision Makers are who represent the developer client’s interests. The Designers then work with the Stakehold-

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ers, Gatekeepers, and Decision Makers to identify the appropriate objectives and metrics, such as energy use intensity (kBtu/ft2-yr), illuminance (lux), and operating income ($/month). They further work with the team to understand constraints and relative priorities for these objectives. Next, the Designers identify the decisions they need to consider, the sequences of those decisions, and plan and document the processes needed to construct and explore the Design Spaces. Building on this knowledge, they set about exploring alternatives for each decision. For example, they may first explore different percentages of residential, office, and commer-

Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices

cial program, focusing on potential operating income within the planning constraints. They may next explore different masses of preferred program percentages on the site, refining the financial analyses, while beginning to understand energy and experiential performance such as views and access to amenities. Finally, they can generate a new Design Space to explore different ranges of window-to-wall ratios and wall constructions on a few selected masses and programs. They further refine the financial and energy analyses, while exploring daylight, views, and other objectives. With each of these Design Spaces, they may use a “design of experiments� method to reduce the number of alternatives they simulate, and a statistical analysis method to understand the driving parameters. They can also construct value equations that weigh Stakeholder’s objectives, and order alternatives from best to worst with respect to these priorities. They finally visualize these Design Spaces using a Parallel Coordinates Plots and other data visualization approaches that help students understand trade-offs, and optimize and clearly communicate the rationale for their design decisions. De-

sign teams may include uncertainty about any of this information, or probabilistic ranges, rather than specific values, for any of the performance or preference data.

However, quantification of uncertainty adds a level of complexity that design teams often struggle to incorporate into their decision-making processes.

We implement DSC using an extensible computational infrastructure based on a systems integration approach.

This infrastructure includes visual parametric modeling technology (Rhino & Grasshopper) for automatic generation of alternatives, and management of the computational process. It relies on open-source plugins (Honeybee and Ladybug for energy and daylight), Bespoke algorithms (for view and cost) performance, and statistical analysis (R). It uses web-based resources (Google Docs, Design Explorer) that selectively upload, share, and visualize data across systems. This infrastructure helps teams organize and define the objectives and parametric ranges of alternatives, and automates the generation, analysis and visualization of the Design Space.

Figure 4: DSC impact analysis implementation developed for this collaboration.

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Perkins and Will has iteratively developed and validated DSC through university classes and professional projects over the last three years, adapting the framework to include new building types, and creating new design generators and analyzers18. Validation included ethnographic-action methods to iteratively develop, test and improve the methods on multiple project contexts. A survey with advanced computational design students and professionals provided evidence that the DSC framework did help project teams construct and explore better Design Spaces. Perkins and Will and the University of Washington decided to explore the convergence of the City of Seattle and Perkins and Will’s Seattle office’s burgeoning high-performance, high-rise building experience, Perkins and Will’s DSC framework, and the University’s deep expertise in integrated design research and education, to explore how Design Spaces might impact the teaching and design of living high-rise buildings.

The seminar-studio structure integrated the high-performance buildings, economic, and human experience research from the participating university and practice-based research labs into the coursework. It also fostered interdisciplinary engagement in the studio, and strengthened collaborations among students, faculty, and professionals. The seminar and studio served as a laboratory to test tools and methods, and to evaluate outcomes that identify critical opportunities to overcome technical and financial barriers to highperformance buildings in urban Seattle and elsewhere.

The collaboration was framed around specific Perkins and Will project site contexts seeking Seattle’s LBPP and HALA, which presented very real and current information about existing conditions, zoning and code requirements, comparable revenue expectations, and construction cost. DSC was presented as a framework to both seminar and studio as a methodology to support formal design and decision-making process.

Figure 4 elaborates the impact analysis section of Figure 1 to show the analyses processes that we provided to students. We provided a series of building generators that allowed student to create single floor plans or entire building massing, and connected these to analysis engines. Finally, we provided Design Space visualization tools that helped students visualize and analyze the information in the Design Space to support decisionmaking.

4.1 The Research Seminar

4.0 THE COURSEWORK: LBC HIGH-RISE RESEARCH AND DESIGN SERIES

The seminar-studio course linkage serves multiple purposes. In the context of a ten-week design studio, the time required to robustly investigate design frameworks and establish performance targets tailored to specific project typologies; and to contemplate appropriate tools and methods, severely limits time for design and synthesis. By dedicating an entire quarter to gathering and compiling resources, students were able to conduct a deep investigation of key design and outcome parameters without the pressure of immediately incorporating partial or incomplete findings into an active design project. Further, students in the design studio, after a briefing from the research seminar team, were equipped with tools and data to begin synthesis and evaluation immediately, rather than data gathering and tool selection. Studio participants were required to carry the same set of performance targets and baselines for energy, cost, materials, etc. through the duration of studio, to make comparisons between proposed project concepts and design alternatives possible.

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The seminar explicitly developed the groundwork for the advanced design studio and the design of a mixeduse urban mid- to high-rise building. While aimed at students entering the post-professional HPB program, it was open to students in the professional MArch and the MS Design Computing program, as well as students in allied disciplines. Although ideally students would take both the seminar and studio, the seminar was suitable as a stand-alone course for students interested in topics of sustainable design and building performance evaluation. We delivered the seminar through guest lectures, discussions, and directed investigations into specific topic areas. The research topic areas assigned to groups and individuals are included in Figure 5.

Perkins and Will steered students towards zoning envelope limits and considerations based on their experience evaluating the site for a real-world project proposal. We limited potential program use-types to office, retail, and multifamily residential since energy targets, revenue expectations, and construction costs for these space types are readily available on a unit or squarefoot normalized basis for use in establishing project performance baselines and targets.

The deliverables included identification of the Stakeholder’s and objectives for the project, illustrations and presentations of performance-based design and decision making processes, and a formal publication for reference and use by studio participants. Figure 6 shows an example of the objectives and metrics. Students also identified promising design strategies, and worked with

Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices

Figure 5: Assigned topic areas in research seminar.

Figure 6: Required project evaluation metrics.

Figure 7: Screenshots from the computational infrastructure and tutorials provided to students for modeling and analyzing data.

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Perkins and Will DSC consultants to modify the DSC scripts, shown in Figure 7, to adapt to the specific project context.

Students in the seminar finally prepared a brief slideshow overview of their topic area, a detailed written report, and a shared folder with tools, resources, and data sets. Students presented this material at the end of the seminar, and again during the first week of the studio the following quarter.

4.2 The Studio

The studio pedagogy intended to integrate computational and performance-based thinking into building design and representational processes. An overarching theme was to investigate and document project performance potential in attribute categories of economy, ecology, and experience; and to interleave empiricallybased evaluation with design synthesis based on value-weighted outcome goals. In both iterations of the studio the design project was a mixed-use tower (one in Seattle’s South Lake Union technology hub and one in Seattle’s Belltown Urban Center Village), shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Project locations in Seattle, Washington for two successive iterations of the design studio.

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We divided the ten-week academic quarter into a fastpaced structure with five themes: one week of project definition; then two weeks each of design concepts and performance metrics, consultant collaboration and analysis (which were a series of technical workshops); synthesis and innovation, and finally, production and communication. To achieve the highest level of development possible during the ten-week term, students were encouraged, but not required, to work in teams of two or three. We assigned each team a cost consultant (from the Construction Management program) and a structural and life cycle assessment consultant (from Civil Engineering program). We directed all students to co-craft deliverables, and to establish and meet shared roles and responsibilities.

4.2.1 Design Space Construction Workshop After a brief introduction to the studio, site, and program challenges, the students worked with Perkins and Will’s Research Labs to learn the DSC framework and methods, and to adapt them to the needs of their project.

This began with a workshop that combined an introduc-

tion; a theory and a hands on experience with the visual programming-based parametric analysis script shown previously. Students used and adapted the DSC workflow throughout the studio to output performance data for design scenarios for comparative analysis. Figure 9 illustrates that students also had tutorials for how to apply the scripts to the high-rise context, and access to a Perkins and Will computational designer to assist with formulating and troubleshooting computational tools during studio hours. These resources were available to enable students to focus on testing design alternatives and conducting synthesis activities rather than spending time in the mechanics of the quantification tools.

Students were then asked to develop four concept-level programmatic briefs for their project and preliminary massing diagrams for site around the parameters of experience, ecology, and economy using the zoning guidelines and performance criteria baselines derived from data provided from the seminar course. Per City of Seattle requirements, each project provided a retail base, and preserved an existing historic “character� fa-

Figure 9: Screenshots from the computational infrastructure and tutorials provided to students for modeling and analyzing data.

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cade of the existing building on site. At the outset of the studio, the project program remained undefined.

Students were asked to construct and explore a Design Space that explored a program mix of retail, office, and residential to optimize building height and leasable area, number and type of dwelling units, sustainability, and qualitative concerns within the site and zoning envelope.

The establishment of the building scale and programmix was the first of several opportunities for the students to utilize DSC. The relatively simple program allowed students to examine how various building sizes and programmatic configurations affected their resultant building’s likely cost, energy consumption, water use, and revenue; and to identify the critical challenges associated with meeting the LBPP framework. Figure 10 shows one student group’s proposals aimed at different priorities for maximizing their goals.

We also asked students to create a “preferred” option that integrated the best of each scheme as they saw it, and to report approximately twenty key metrics for each option in the second week of the studio. Figure 11 shows another student group’s proposal, with values plotted in the Parallel Coordinates Plot, and normalized for easier relative comparison. Students presented these proposals, to a group of building owners, architects, and developers for their feedback. Based on this feedback, each group derived one range of alternatives to carry forward into a series of weeklong technical workshops focused on energy, facade design, water, materials, and information communication design.

The structure of the Seattle LBBP requires each project to achieve full compliance with one of the three most technically challenging LBC “Petals”: zero-net water, zero-net energy, or meeting the materials “Petal.”

These areas plus a facade design became the focus of a sequence of weekly technical workshops. The structure of these workshops included a Monday guest-lecture and hands-on workshop, Wednesday desk crits and simulation assistance, and a Friday pin-up and review with practitioner subject-matter experts. During the Friday session, students presented case studies and their own methods for representing performance data for key attributes of their project. In the final week before production, we held a technical integration review aimed at synthesis of all of the technical sessions into Design Spaces that explored optimization and trade-offs of objectives.

4.2.2 Energy and Renewables Simulation Workshop The energy and renewables workshop identified and explored the key variables that drive energy use intensity, peak heating and cooling loads, and opportunities for on-site renewable energy generation. At this stage, we asked students to test floor plate geometry, program mix, and window patterns to understand how choices either improve or diminish building energy performance. The DSC Grasshopper tool had been “pre-loaded” with typical energy consumption patterns and schedules for the primary program types. At this stage of design only architectural components such as glazing, massing, and program type were subject to modification. This isolated the energy-effects of architectural form decision making, which allowed students to see the interactive

Figure 10: Early massing studies to optimize various priorities. (Image: Erik Rostad, Amanda Weinstein).

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Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices

Figure 11: Student Design Space, with parallel coordinates plot of normalized data. (Image: Elham Soltani, Xiaoxi Jiao, Farhana Haque).

impacts of heating, cooling and lighting while seeing whether those changes had an overall positive of negative impact on building energy consumption.

Concurrently, student teams explored renewable energy production potential. This included creating parametric ranges of horizontal photovoltaic (PV) area and/or solarthermal hot water required to provide for net-zero energy annual use of their massing and program concepts.

They subsequently identified potential PV area on their designs, calculating the percentage of estimated annual energy consumption, and developing system diagrams shown in Figure 12. This exercise enabled students to

test-fit the viability of achieving the Energy Petal for their various scenarios.

4.2.3 Water Design Workshop The water workshop focused around three key objectives. First students estimated the total annual gallons of harvestable rainwater falling on the building site area. Second students identified the anticipated water use intensity and total consumption for each program component. Third, the student teams calculated the potential greywater production and consumption for each program type. This exercise allowed students to test-fit their project for achieving the Water Petal, and further

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Figure 12: Energy analysis: reduction from baseline by energy use type with renewable supply. (Image: Katelyn Bristow, Erik Rostad).

Figure 13: Water analysis: Office residential greywater balance - non-potable production vs. use. (Image: Vy Nguyen).

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to identify synergies between each program typology potable water consumption, grey water production, and greywater consumption. They developed water system flow diagrams shown in Figure 13, and parametrized these into a Design Space. Though the LBC Water Petal requires meeting all water use through on-site captured rainwater, the Seattle LBPP requires all projects to use non-potable water uses (e.g. toilet flushing) are met with non-potable water. This requirement led several teams to size residential areas (which produce significantly more greywater than they can use) to optimally serve office areas (which require significant greywater for toilet flushing).

4.2.4. Facade Development Workshop The facade workshop synthesized energy concepts with goal setting for daylighting, views, passive ventilation, and solar control to help students create a Design Space for shaping the geometry and location of windows, shading devices, and exterior spaces. This used both the DSC Grasshopper parametric analysis tools

and the quick facade evaluation tool COMFEN. Further, students identified facade case studies, cladding, and detailing methods for potential material choices. These studies targeted “typical” components of the project such as an office floor and a residential floor. Figure 14 illustrates aspects of one student Design Space.

These studies began to shape the visual character of the building enclosure.

4.2.5. Design Synthesis and Documentation In the synthesis and innovation section of the studio, students used this analysis process and information about performance in a creative synthesis process in which they explored Design Spaces further, adding new decisions. For example, Figure 15 shows one student group’s process of iteratively understanding the performance, and developing more detail in a sequence of steps. The early program analysis led them to identify where they could rotate different sections of the building to different orientations. These masses were then further faceted and warped to minimize incident solar

Figure 14: Facade analysis: Window-to-wall ratio and energy impacts. (Image: Erik Rostad and Amanda Weinstein).

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Figure 15: Rotating and creating a faceted facade to optimize daylighting and energy use. (Image: Rachel Myers and Seemi Hasan).

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Figure 16: Student project renderings. (Image: Vy Nguyen, Atif Khwaja, Jeremy Smith, Katelyn Bristow, Erik Rostad, Elham Soltani, Xiaoxi Jiao, Farhana Haque)

Figure 17: Parallel Coordinates Plot showing comparison of all students’ final projects across a selection of metrics.

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Figure 18: Student project renderings. (Image: Elham Soltani, Xiaoxi Jiao, Farhana Haque).

radiation in the summer, while maximizing it in the winter. The forms were further modified for structural efficiency, and then finally fenestrated to optimize daylight penetration.

We asked students to design and document their processes for evaluating spatial, material, and formal design decisions based on empirical multidisciplinary performance criteria. Particular emphasis included collaborative project development and communication of performance intent, design and evaluation process, performance outcomes, and decision-making. Figure 16 shows student representations of their designs. Figure 17 shows they provided final design data enabling comparison across schemes in terms of several input and output parameters defined by the instructors. Students presented slideshows describing their Design Spaces, and discussing key decision-points, questions asked, and evidence supporting those choices, and design boards that communicated the architecture. Figure 18 shows one student illustration of the experience of the internal space of their concept. They also reflected on the process, identifying new areas of research and development that can improve the financial, environmental, and social impacts of the built environment.

5.0 CONCLUSIONS

Design practice is becoming more performance-based, and computer-driven. This article described a collab-

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oration to create curriculum to meet the rising needs for new professionals who are conversant in a broad range of environmental, experiential, and economic metrics, and in the computational methods needed to find designs that maximize and balance performance.

This collaboration included many stakeholders; including students, professors, researchers, architects, engineers, and developers—each looking to understand how to leverage DSC technologies to support better, faster, more performance-driven design decisions. In class surveys, one student remarked, “(the class) challenged us to think of the building as a system”. Another said it “taught me to step out of my typical intuitive way of designing”. A third mentioned that she “came out of the studio having more confidence about building performance”. A consulting engineer was “surprised by the variety of design responses to the same problem”. A researcher described how they were pleased that it “brought together emerging tools and methods with real-world feedback”. The client called it “Brilliant.

I have never seen anything like this”. This article concludes with an analysis of the impacts on teaching and practice, and outlines lessons learned for future work.

5.1 Impacts on Teaching

The seminar and studio highlighted several challenges and opportunities for learning and teaching through its development and delivery. It tested the ways in which creative and computational work converge, helping students leverage quantitative data to inform and de-

Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices

fend design intention, while identifying and developing both the analytic and synthesis skills needed for performance-based, computationally-informed design processes.

One concern raised early on by students was that by using empirical methods to define program, massing, scale and other building components, all of the buildings in the studio would come out very similar—that we had essentially structured the studio as a “math problem” with a single solution. Ultimately, this was not the case. In fact, as students overlaid different value systems (e.g. economy, ecology, and experience), the range of building sizes, shapes, and material expression was highly varied. However, when students prioritized residual dollar value, most buildings fared best when fully maximizing the zoning envelope.

We required students to clearly define their project goals, generate measurable results, and use both computation and intuition to test design ideas to drive toward optimization. A recurring challenge with this approach was to continue to track building performance outcomes across a range of attributes and metrics through the very fluid early stages of the design process. Each student team ultimately gravitated toward different project goals and establishing a “story” for the project, which seemed to be a way to keep progress on track. The DSC tool enabled the tracking of performance metrics, but the stories that students told about the people who would use the building, or the idea of how it could serve critical social functions, were crucial organizing structures that drove toward a meaningful piece of architecture.

Commensurate with the short quarter and the relentless pace of developing a large complex building from program to schematic design-ready building proposal in ten weeks was a challenge. The students who had the most success tended to be able to effectively set-up simulation questions, quickly make decisions based on the output, and then synthesize that information into a design framework. Where students struggled most was in the management and prioritization of information. Often an effective strategy was, when evaluating a range of options, to identify variables where there may be some difference, but that in the bigger picture were not meaningful, and to eliminate those from the exploration. This had the beneficial effect of requiring students to use critical decision-making to identify where architectural or behavioral changes truly “moved the needle” in terms of performance, and where the false precision of a few decimal points difference, was not a meaning-

ful distinction. This is an area where the outcome of the research seminar was beneficial. Students in the studio could reference similar project attributes and outcome ranges to calibrate whether their results were in the ballpark, way off, or where they might exclude certain metrics from a decision-making process.

Given more time, we would include more opportunities for iterative feedback loops and open-ended search for synergies. However, the speed required to bring the project up to expected level of resolution served to focus the effort, and is a reasonable approximation of the stresses of professional practice.

Constructive feedback from students came in a few key threads. The main one was that there were too many subject matter experts coming at them, and that it was overwhelming to take in all of information provided.

Further, the students felt as though they did not have enough unstructured “design time” with informal desk crits and time to work in studio. In the second offering of the studio, we eliminated the materials workshop in favor of more unstructured time so that the students could focus on how performance metrics can drive their design. In both iterations of the studio, a practicing computational designer was available during studio time to assist with troubleshooting and to provide technical guidance on developing and executing simulation.

Students universally praised this valuable asset to the studio.

Curriculum engagement serves several purposes for each type of participant. The students learned emerging performance-based design methods from and experts in key areas of building performance and simulation.

For the design firm, participation in the development and delivery of the curriculum enabled the firm to: validate and test the workflows in a project-based setting; advance these workflows in collaboration with student and researcher perspectives; produce case studies and data in how new modes of practice can apply to projects; and, evaluate and recruit prospective professionals. The faculty and university were able to test a new research-studio model in advance of changes to the larger curriculum.

5.2 Impacts on Practice

The collaboration is having an impact on practice by influencing the training of the students we hire, testing and advancing the tools we use in a low risk environment, and using the data to better understand the design problems we face.

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The studio provided an ideal environment in which a group of students and professionals can get to know each other. Students had the opportunity to engage in the context of an actual project, and understand the issues that are most relevant to a design firm and their clients and consultants. The design firm had the opportunity to see how adept students are with tools and analysis, how well they work with colleagues and how gifted they were at synthesizing interesting design spaces.

The collaboration also provided the opportunity to test and advance DSC workflows. Students are more technology savvy, curious, and do not know what they do not know. They are more willing and able to engage in testing prototype tools, and trying new things. The collaboration helped us adapt the workflow to address the high-rise building typology more specifically. For example, we added building generators geared towards modeling single floors, as well as entire building massing, and modified the analyses to be able to process these forms in acceptable time. The students also advanced these workflows, for example, prototyping a constructability analysis module, and proposing ways to better assess team performance while constructing Design Spaces19.

The work in the studio has helped us develop the confidence in the DSC workflow to begin to apply it into our practices. We have built Design Spaces for our clients that explore a wide range of building typologies, including schools, residences, hospitals, and high-rises, and helped answer questions about the siting, massing, envelope, and articulation of these building types.

Through delivery of this curriculum, we are more confident in the power of the DSC process to support the creative process. Student results varied broadly depending on the goals they chose to prioritize and the strategies they chose to explore.

Finally, the work is beginning to inform the industry about high performance building. The client benefited by being presented with a wide range of innovative design solutions on their project site that complied with the LBPP triggering the incentives for additional height and floor area ratio. When we work with Design Spaces, we begin to get a better picture of the design problems we are facing. The case studies provided us with evidence about the constraints associated with complying with the Living Building Pilot Program. For example, the project needs to pursue at least one of the following petals, which all have specific challenges: Energy, Water, or Materials. The Energy and Water petals rely

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on the rooftop as a resource for using solar panels to generate electricity and surfaces for collecting stormwater. For buildings that are more than seven stories, the relatively small size of the rooftop compared with the building area is proving to not be sufficient. For projects over seven stories, they are left with either the Materials Petal or use the ILFI Offsite Renewables Exception to meet the Energy Petal by “scale jumping� and providing solar panels both onsite and offsite. The Materials Petal requires complying with the ILFI Red List to avoid using harmful chemicals in the building materials. In addition to being a significant effort by the design and construction team, the current estimate is a 10 percent increase to the total construction cost. This cost premium will likely go down over time as the industry certifies more building products with the ILFI Declare program building. Additional resources such as the Perkins and Will Transparency List are also helping to drive the building industry toward healthy materials which will create more competition and drive the costs down.

Another finding from the Design Spaces for these case studies is that the combination of residential and office in a mixed-use building helps meet the LBPP water requirement of providing non-potable water for non-potable uses. In other words, the water for toilet flushing, irrigation, and cooling towers needs to come from captured rainwater and treated greywater from sinks and showers. The greywater from the residences, mostly showers, helps balance the needs for toilet flushing in the offices and any irrigation needs.

The Design Spaces were also analyzing the financial metrics associated with complying with the ecological requirements of the LBPP. Because the case studies were in locations zoned for high-rise construction, in order to take advantage of the additional height and FAR, many of the projects analyzed how to maximize the leasable area. A deep floor plate, however, can have a negative impact on daylighting and natural ventilation cooling which makes it more difficult to meet the energy requirements. One of the findings from these Design Spaces balancing daylighting and revenue is that the distance from the building core to the perimeter glazing should be about two to three times the floor to ceiling height. Another finding related to thermal performance is the significant impact of the window to wall ratio and the benefit of finely tuning it for each of the elevations to maximize daylighting and views while minimizing unwanted solar heat gain and thermal loss through the glass.

Constructing Performance-Based Tools and Practices

5.3 Future Work

The collaboration revealed many challenges and potential areas of future work related to how to form and train teams, how to define and manage objectives, how best to generate the alternatives, run analyses, and synthesize this information into creative, performance-based design processes.

Team formation is critical. The concepts of integrated decision making require in depth knowledge on many topics: computational design, performance analysis, data analysis are three domains that today’s typical architect is not familiar with, but needs to develop or get access to in order to execute the DSC workflow. Incorporating additional domains, such as real estate to understand the lifecycle economic impacts, civil and construction engineering, and even neuroscience that helps us understand the human experience, would enable more informed design processes, but would also create additional coordination costs. In addition to this domain expertise, the studio revealed just how important design synthesis skills are. Future work will explore, what skills are needed for performance-based high-rise design. It will also explore when is it better to teach designers these skills, or to teach them to collaborate with those who possess them.

Objectives focus the process. While the metrics provided to the students adequately capture the requirements of LBPP, they lacked metrics to capture the first and lifecycle economic cost implications, as well as many experiential criteria that factor into decision making.

Further students lacked a sense of hierarchy for understanding which metrics have the most importance for specific decisions. Future work will explore, what are the most relevant environmental, economic, experiential performance criteria for these projects, and how best to measure them.

Performance-based design is about discovering highperforming alternatives. Historically, designers have relied on precedent and intuition to identify the alternatives and parameter ranges to explore. DSC results in a database of alternatives and their performance that creates the potential for the reuse of rationale developed for one design space in a similar context for a new design decision. Future work will explore, what are the most important decision variables in high-rise design, and how to rapidly generate promising high-rise building typologies and systems?

Design teams need fast and accurate multidisciplinary impacts. We still lack meaningful analysis processes for many experiential and lifecycle economic factors. Methods for natural ventilation, energy, and daylight analysis, while advancing in terms of speed and accuracy, still require too much time for very large design spaces.

Emerging circadian lighting analysis and occupancy simulation models promise to provide further information about the human experience in space. Parallel cloud-based computing and statistical and machinelearning methods promise faster analysis processes, and to reduce the amount of information that we need to simulate. Finally, performance-based design is full of uncertainties in the information. Design teams need more experience calculating and using uncertainty information in the Design Spaces they construct. Future work will explore how to increase the types, speed, and fidelity of the impact analyses processes to give designers the right information more quickly.

Finally, design processes ultimately need to deliver value—to clients and to society. Performance-based design requires different sets of skills from traditional architecture. Future designers need to master the collaborative problem formulation skills of engaging stakeholders and defining objectives, the analytical skills of doing performance and data analysis, and the synthesis skills of sensing promising design spaces to explore.

They need to learn to internalize many of these skills, while also learning greater collaboration skills to leverage skills of their team members. Ultimately, our work will continue to investigate how to train the next generation of talent to integrate emerging technical processes with design synthesis processes to maximize the economic, environmental and experiential performance and value of their projects.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Alex Dao, Elizabeth Kelley, Connor Jones, Katelyn Bristow, Erik Rostad, Jeremy Smith, Amanda Weinstein, Atif Khwaja, John Davis, Seemi Hasan, Matt Seager, Elham Soltani, Rachel Meyers, Zachary Melnik, Jingwen Liu, Farhana Haque, Gaura Ely, Weicheng Li, Xiaoxi Jiao, Aparna Joijode, Jayeong Koo, Teresa Moroseos, Jordan Selig, Andy Lee, Charles Gronek, Brian McLaren, Sangeetha Divikar, Bo Jung, Carsten Stinn, Cameron Hall, Ed Palushock, Ankur Jain, Sarah Eddy, Erik Mott, Kay Kornovich, Marcelo Bernal, Tyrone Marshall, Victor Okhoya, Roya Rezaee, Phillip Ewing and the Research Board at Perkins and Will for their participation and support of this work.

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REFERENCES

[10] Charles, P., and Thomas, C., (2009). “Four Approaches to Teaching with Building Performance Simulation Tools in Undergraduate Architecture and Engineering Education”, Journal of Building Performance Simulation, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 95-114.

[2] Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development, (2017). “Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda”, Retrieved on 11/2018 from http://www.seattle.gov/hala.

[11] Ibarra, D., and Reinhart, C., (2009). “Daylight Factor Simulations – How Close Do Simulation Beginners ‘Really’ Get?”, Proceedings of Building Simulation 2009, Eleventh International IBPSA Conference, Glasgow, Scotland, July 27-30, pp. 196-203.

[1] Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, (2018). “Living Building Pilot Program”, Retrieved on 11/2018 from http://www.seattle.gov/sdci/permits/greenbuilding/living-building-and-2030-challenge-pilots.

[3] Aksamija, A., and Brown, D., (2018). “Integration of Parametric Design Methods and Building Performance Simulations for High-Performance Buildings”, Perkins and Will Research Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 29–53.

[4] Haymaker, J., Bernal, M., Marshall, T., Okhoya, V., Szilasi, A., Rezaee, R., Chen, C., Salveson, A., Brechtel, J., Deckinga, L., Hasan, H., Ewing, P., and Welle, B., (2018). “Design Space Construction: A Framework to Support Collaborative, Parametric Decision Making”, Journal of Information Technology in Construction, Vol. 23, pp. 157–178.

[5] Deutsch R., (2015). “Leveraging Data in Academia and Practice: Geometry, Human- and Building-Performance”, Proceedings of the ARCC 2015 Conference – The FUTURE of Architectural Research, Chicago, IL, pp 320 – 325.

[6] Gerber, D., and Flager, F., (2011). “Teaching Design Optioneering: A Method for Multidisciplinary Design Optimization”, Proceedings of the Computing in Civil Engineering 2011 Conference, pp. 883-890.

[7] Nicknam, M., Bernal, M., and Haymaker, J., (2013).

“A Case Study in Teaching Construction of Building Design Spaces”, Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, Delft, The Netherlands, pp. 595-604.

[8] Nichols, A., (2005). “Structures and Studio: Re-integration of Art and Science”, Proceedings of the 93rd ACSA Annual Meeting, pp. 180-184.

[9] Bloom, B., Hastings, J., and Madaus, G., (1971).

Handbook on Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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[12] Gallas, M., Jacquot, K., Jancart, S., and Delvaux, F., (2015). “Parametric Modeling: An Advanced Design Process for Architectural Education”, Proceedings of CAADe 33 Conference, Vienna, Austria, pp. 149-157.

[13] Oxman, R., (2017). “Thinking Difference: Theories and Models of Parametric Design Thinking”, Design Studies, Vol. 52, pp. 4-39.

[14] Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, (2018). Retrieved on 11/1/2018 from http://www. seattle.gov/dpd/.

[15] International Living Future Institute, (2018).

“International Living Future Institute”, Retrieved on 11/1/2018 from https://living-future.org/.

[16] Gane, V., and Haymaker, J., (2010. “Benchmarking Current Conceptual High-Rise Design Processes”, Journal of Architectural Engineering, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp.

100–111.

[17] Inselberg, A., (2009). Parallel Coordinates: Visual Multidimensional Geometry and Its Applications, New York, NY: Springer Science & Business Media.

[18] Perkins and Will and Haymaker, J., (2015). “Design Space Construction”, Retrieved on 8/4/2018 from http://designspaceconstruction.org.

[19] Borhani, A., Sturts Dossick, C., Meek, C., Kleiner, D., and Haymaker, J., (2018). “Adopting Parametric Design and Construction Analyses in Integrated Design Teams”, Proceedings of the 35th CIB W78 2018 Conference: IT in Design, Construction, and Management, Chicago, IL, pp. 351-358.

Constructing Design Spaces

05.

CONSTRUCTING DESIGN SPACES: Case Studies in Parametric Building Performance Analysis at Perkins and Will Victor Okhoya, ALMIT, Associate AIA, victor.okhoya@perkinswill.com Marcelo Bernal, PhD, marcelo.bernal@perkinswill.com Cheney Chen, PhD, PEng, BEMP, CPHD, LEED AP BD+C, cheney.chen@perkinswill.com

Tyrone Marshall, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, tyrone.marshall@perkinswill.com John Haymaker, PhD, AIA, LEED AP, john.haymaker@perkinswill.com

ABSTRACT Parametric analysis is an important method for design exploration in architectural practice. However, architects do not take full advantage of its capabilities because they lack systematic methods for rigorous implementation. Design Space Construction (DSC) is a parametric analysis framework aimed at making multidisciplinary design exploration more methodical. This article discusses three case studies that have undertaken DSC for performance-driven building design. The reviewed projects involve massing and envelope configuration and construction decisions for a high school academic building, a high-rise commercial-residential development, and a university students’ residence, all located in British Columbia, Canada. The article describes the processes used in executing DSC, the types of questions it helped answer, and the conclusions that the design teams drew from the process. We compare these outcomes to more typical simulation approaches used in practice. The article concludes with a discussion of the perceived benefits of DSC and the challenges faced constructing and exploring the design spaces.

KEYWORDS: design exploration, parametric analysis, design space construction, building performance analysis

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Architectural design is an exploratory process, described by Jones as comprised of analysis, synthesis and evaluation1. This process iteratively explores design requirements, synthesizes these requirements into design solutions, evaluates the extent to which solutions fulfill the requirements and then adjusts the solutions for a new round of iteration. Akin described it as a heuristic exploration through a set of design states in search of a design solution state2.

Parametric analysis is a design exploration method that simulates a large number of design alternatives based on the combinatorial variation of design parameters.

Parametric analysis is now a relevant design methodology in architectural design due to several factors, including increasing performance requirements on projects, computational design and analysis methods, and high performance computing. Parametric analysis for building performance has been an active area of research. Machairas et al. reviewed methods and tools for building design optimization3. Nguyen et al. reviewed simulation-based parametric analysis methods focusing on simulation programs, optimization tools, efficiency of optimization methods and industry trends4.

Evins presented a review of significant research applying parametric analysis to sustainable building design problems5.

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However, research has also indicated that architects struggle to implement parametric analysis in practice.

Gane and Haymaker have described the difficulty of design exploration due to lack of formal processes for translating multi-stakeholder requirements into specific parameters used to generate alternative spaces, and processes for understanding the impact of these parameters on multi-stakeholder value6. According to Clevenger et al., current practice fails to generate high quality design alternatives due to lack of systematic methods for evaluating the efficacy of design exploration processes7.

Design Space Construction (DSC) is a formal methodological framework for problem formulation and solving that addresses the challenges of implementing parametric design exploration in practice, as seen in Figure 1. Haymaker et al. have defined DSC as a framework that guides teams through a process of Objective Definition, Alternative Generation, Impact Analysis and Value Assessment8. Such a systematic approach not only answers many of the questions architects face when attempting parametric design exploration, it also ensures such processes are efficient, replicable, scalable,

robust and provide reliable quality of outcomes.

DSC assembles the relevant team members to establish the objectives of the design exploration and the criteria used for decision-making. This involves identifying the key roles of the process, specifically stakeholders, decision makers, designers and gatekeepers. Objective Definition involves defining key terms, including objectives, goals, constraints and preferences. Alternative Generation involves changing the options of design variables in order to develop large design spaces for exploration.

Impact Analysis evaluates the influence of the options of an alternative on the design objectives. Value Assessment synthesizes impacts and stakeholder preferences into an objective function that orders the alternatives in terms of their suitability as design solutions.

The goal of DSC is to help a team construct and explore a Design Space. Figure 2 illustrates much of the information contained in a design space, displayed in a Parallel Coordinates Plot (PCP). Built to support a particular decision, it contains a list of the alternatives (sometimes in the thousands), the important design variables that characterize those alternatives, the performance of

Figure 1: DSC formalizes a set of concepts and processes to help design teams construct and explore Design Spaces.

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each alternative on any number of environmental, economic, and experiential goals. It is possible to combine and weigh these numbers to reflect a particular stakeholder’s or group of stakeholders’ values. In this way, it is possible to understand the impacts of particular inputs on outputs, as well as to order all alternatives from worst to first from a stakeholder’s perspective.

We implemented DSC for the projects described in this article as a layered technological solution comprising analysis engines, plugins and wrappers, parametric modeling and data visualization interfaces, as shown in Figure 3. Analysis engines included Energy Plus9 for energy analysis and Radiance10 for daylight simulation, and bespoke analyses for views, first and lifecycle cost, and other objectives. Plugins and wrappers included HoneyBee11 and LadyBug12 both acting in the Grasshopper13 for Rhinoceros14 interface. We performed parametric modeling in Grasshopper. We performed Data Visualization within Design Explorer15, a parallel coordinates plot (PCP) tool.

We have developed and validated DSC through ethnographic and action research-based methodologies. To date, we have engaged academia through the devel-

opment and delivery of 15 University courses16,17, at international conferences18, and at internal workshops to over 200 students and professionals who have developed more than 100 design spaces. We have done this to understand the state of the art and develop robust tools and methods that can hope to meet the many needs of design professionals. We have also begun implementing DSC on projects, having completed more than a dozen projects at Perkins and Will at the time of publishing.

This article discusses three case studies, focusing on the implementation of DSC on projects undertaken in the Vancouver office of Perkins and Will. The projects are a high school development proposal, a mixed-use commercial-residential high-rise development, and a university students’ residence. The goal is to highlight how, compared to traditional approaches, the DSC framework better enables design teams to define and answer questions with more confidence. The article describes the projects, defining the design questions that DSC sought to address, describing how we executed DSC, the design spaces constructed, and conclusions reached.

Figure 2: A PCP that describes much of the important information contained in a Design Space, and how it relates to different alternatives and variables.

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Figure 3: Layered implementation of DSC.

2.0 THE CASE FOR DSC

In order to understand the rationale for DSC it is useful to understand the types of questions that designers encounter when considering parametric design space exploration. These questions include: What output variables will best represent the design problem? What input variables correlate best with these outputs? How do these input variables relate to each other – for example, which input variables take priority over others? Who decides this priority and on what basis? How should we evaluate multiple, possibly conflicting, output variables?

Practical implementation of parametric analysis has shown that we cannot simply run input and output simulations without answering these underlying questions.

DSC was created as a framework that helps designers respond to these questions in a systematic fashion.

The integration of processes and roles into a single decision-making framework allows DSC to address these implementation questions. Chachere and Haymaker described how clarity of decision-making rationale can be incorporated into decision-making frameworks like DSC19. Such rationale answers questions relating to what variables are used for analysis, who decides on these variables and on what basis they make these decisions. Clevenger and Haymaker showed how frameworks like DSC can be used to measure the effectiveness of parametric analyses and the quality of design recommendations they provide20. This is important because not every analysis is suitable for every problem. Frameworks like DSC can provide useful metrics to assess the relevance of parametric analysis for design problem solving.

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Architectural design problems are inherently multi-disciplinary, and effective architectural decision-making processes must take into account methods for analyzing multiple, sometimes conflicting, criteria. Although researchers have investigated multi-objective analysis for building performance, the incorporation of systematic frameworks like DSC enables designers to get the best value from the multi-objective analysis. Diakaki et al. performed a multi-objective analysis to evaluate the best design alternative for maximizing energy savings and minimizing construction costs21. Murray et al. investigated energy performance retrofitting using four criteria: capital investment, minimum energy cost postretrofit, minimum carbon emission post-retrofit and maximum payback period22. While both these studies deal with conflicting multiple objectives, from an architectural perspective they are not truly multi-disciplinary.

They are primarily concerned with energy performance and for the architect this is just one axis in multiple dimensions across which she must make decisions.

Multi-objective exploration of energy and daylight performance is a good example of architectural multidisciplinary parametric analysis. Nielsen et al. argued that energy reduction and improved occupant comfort obtained from dynamic facades can only be achieved through an integrated process23. For example, improving internal daylighting can reduce artificial lighting energy consumption but at the same time increase heat gain. They used an integrated simulation process to perform multi-objective analysis by feeding the outputs of the daylighting analysis into the thermal simulation analysis. Ahmad et al. used machine learning as a sur-

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rogate model for predicting hourly energy analysis and daylight illuminance24. The use of surrogate models for multi-disciplinary analysis is desirable because daylight simulations are typically time expensive.

Although both the above studies are multi-disciplinary, they do not provide a systematic method for assessing the combined value of conflicting objectives. One approach is to develop a multi-objective value function and use optimization methods, such as Pareto Front analysis. Lartigue et al. recognized a gap in performing multi-objective analysis for both daylight and energy load optimization25. They proposed a methodology for simultaneously optimizing heating load, cooling load and illuminance using an objective function to establish Pareto-optimal solutions. Flager et al., borrowing from the aerospace and automotive industries, investigated the application of multi-disciplinary optimization for structural and energy performance26. They used Pareto Front optimization to analyze structural cost vs. energy cost for a reference classroom building.

While these efforts are noteworthy for appropriately incorporating value functions into the analysis, the processes they describe are incomplete. They lack decision-making rationale clarity. While the use of value functions makes the evaluation of conflicting objectives more systematic it does not account for different strategic roles in decision making. This risks developing solutions that are satisfactory from one point of view (such as the designer) but which lack relevance for some other role in the decision-making framework. By integrating

roles and processes and by incorporating mechanisms for multi-disciplinary optimization, DSC seeks to address many of the challenges arising from implementing parametric design exploration in practice.

3.0 HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC BUILDING ENVELOPE STUDY

The school campus has 775 students in grades 8 through 12. The school sought to replace existing high school buildings using a phased masterplan approach.

This resulted in a Phase 1 masterplan, consisting of three buildings: two academic buildings and a dining hall building accommodating a wide variety of indoor and outdoor spaces for informal learning and socializing. The project’s design principles included: 1) maximizing connections to the outdoors, both physical and visual; 2) creating academic and athletic facilities with the flexibility and adaptability to change; 3) establishing a new heart of the campus; 4) simplifying and clarifying circulation; and 5) demonstrating leadership in sustainability.

The design team engaged the authors once they had agreed upon the buildings programming and design, and focus was now on the design of a facade system.

The team was pursuing a prefabricated panel concept, which would work well with the cross-laminated timber (CLT) structural system and modules already selected as the primary building structure. The idea was a simple, elegantly designed facade, designed from the inside out with a choice of stone inlays, pressed metal

Figure 4: A design sketch of the high school academic project.

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panels or fins and louvres as the exterior material expressions. Designers expected that panel material and the opaque/transparency ratio would be big drivers of overall building performance. They wanted to understand how these factors, in the context of the building’s site and program, influenced energy and daylight performance, and their ability to meet Passive House27 and LEED28 rating criteria.

3.1. DSC Process

The design team decided to conduct the DSC exercise at first on just one of the three buildings—the Arts and Sciences building. It had three levels, and about 200 possible panel locations on its facade. Given that they were considering about 10 panel types, the raw number of possible panel combinations was 10200. This number is not computable. Therefore, the first consideration in performing DSC was to define a design space reduction

Figure 5: High school DSC process and team member roles.

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strategy. Such a strategy would reduce the amount of simulations required without compromising how representative the simulated sample was of the overall design space.

Figure 5 describes, at a high level, the process that the team undertook to construct the design space. They identified four roles for the DSC process: Designer, Energy Modeler, Computational Designer and Data Analyst. The Designer represented the design team in the process and helped to define goals, objectives, preferences and parameter input ranges. The Energy Modeler helped the designer define realistic input parameters and parameter ranges, defined the zoning for energy analysis and provided zoning input data for the simulation. The Designer and Energy Modeler were also involved in interpreting the results for design decision making. The Computational Designer developed the

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parametric geometry for analysis, processed all analysis inputs in the DSC script and executed the actual simulations, publishing the results to a data visualization interface. The Data Analyst used a design of experiments (DoE) to define a reduced sample space for simulation.

DoE is a statistical method that is effective in design space reduction of large design spaces. The Data Analyst also performed statistical tests and sensitivity analyses to support interpretation of the results.

3.2 Objective Definition

The project sought to achieve Passive House certification. A key requirement of Passive House certification is that both the heating demand and cooling demand are below 15 kwh/m2/year29. However, recognizing that this is a school and that daylighting is important, the design

team also sought a solution that would optimize daylighting in the key activity spaces. They sought the LEED v4 Daylighting credit that requires illuminance levels between 300 lux and 3,000 lux for 9 am and 3 pm, both on a clear sky day at the equinox30. The DSC became an exercise in the multi-objective optimization of facade panels in order to try to meet the Passive House and LEED v4 energy and daylighting criteria.

3.3 Alternative Generation

The design team and DSC team worked together to choose different panel configurations to consider and determine what combination of panels provided the best design expression, while also providing optimized energy and daylighting performance, as seen in Figure 6.

Figure 6: High school panel alternatives.

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3.4 Impact Analysis

The DSC team reduced the Design Space through three distinctive steps: designer intuition, zone-by-zone energy analysis and “design of experiments.” They asked the Designer to use their intuition and experience to identify which panel types were most suited to the different program areas of the design, as shown in Figure 7. The Designer defined shading depth and orientation as part of the panel design parameters, as well as solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) ranges related to glazing within the panels. Designer intuition had the effect of reducing the Design Space to about 288,000,000 combinations, which is still out of practical range.

The DSC team undertook zone-by-zone energy analysis to reduce the design space further. They argued that since the Passive House energy requirements were more prioritized, it made sense to filter down the design space by first identifying suitable ranges of design inputs for energy performance. Zone-by-zone analysis would provide a quick way to identify the most appropriate parameter ranges and panel selections for each individual zone of the building. They based the

parameter ranges for the full building analysis on the worst-case outputs of the zone-by-zone analysis. They defined thirteen zones per level and performed about 800 energy simulation runs. Based on this step, a final Design Space of 13,824 combinations of inputs and panels was identified, as seen in Figure 8.

While 13,824 alternatives is not a prohibitive number, it is still quite high for a multi-objective design exploration involving both energy and daylighting. Run time for each simulation was estimated at about two minutes on standard equipment (for example, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga; Intel Core i7-7600U CPU @ 2.8 GHz, 2 Cores; 16GB RAM ). This would result in a run time of about 20 days. Further design space reduction was required, and it was achieved using a “design of experiments” approach (Figure 9). This reduced the Design Space to 288 simulations, which executed in about two hours using a parallel processing approach on a high performance computer (ProLiant DL380p Gen8; Intel® CPU e5-2640 0 @ 2.50 Ghz, 2492 MhZ, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s), 2 Cores; 128GB RAM).

Figure 7: High school facade areas and Design Space reduction by designer intuition.

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Figure 8: High school zone-by-zone analysis and final Design Space of 13,824 alternatives.

Figure 9: High school after “design of experiments.”

In addition to Design Space reduction, the computational designer developed a spreadsheet driven parametric panelizing process in Grasshopper, as seen in Figure 10. This was responsible for the different combinations of panel selections available to the simulation process. Once the simulations were complete, they visualized and interpreted results using a PCP interface, shown in Figure 11.

3.5 Value Assessment

A number of design alternatives met both the Passive House heating demand and cooling demand requirements. Simultaneously achieving the LEED v4 daylight-

ing metric was more challenging. The DSC process identified a design alternative that could provide 66 percent of usable floor area with between 300 lux – 3000 lux. This was demonstrably better than what unaided designers could achieve. To make this comparison, we conducted a design charrette in Vancouver in September 2017. Participating design teams analyzed the high school building and proposed solutions that would satisfy the Passive House energy requirements and the LEED v4 daylighting requirement. As shown in Figure 12, while able to achieve the Passive House requirements, designers identified solutions with 48 percent daylighting in the required range—significantly lower than DSC.

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Figure 10: High school panelizing and analytical model.

Figure 11: High school building partial PCP.

Figure 12: High school DSC design charrette. Designers versus the DSC process.

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4.0 RESIDENTIAL TOWER MASSING AND FACADE STUDY

This was a commercial residential development situated in the neighborhood of East Vancouver, consisting of a highly insulated tower clad in clear glass with shadow box assemblies. The tower base featured a series of retail spaces and a street-oriented lobby. The designers proposed a community library on the second and third floors, while at the top of the tower they proposed amenity spaces housed in a double height space featuring a communal lounge, a mezzanine library with views to the city, mountains and water, and an outdoor pool area.

The design was inspired both by the character of the neighborhood as well as by the heritage of Northwest modernist tradition of lightweight structural systems, nautical concepts of outriggers and tension elements, and contemporary concepts of prefabrication and plugin-play assemblies. The design team proposed lightweight balconies of undecided depth to create outdoor living rooms. They intended the balconies to provide

full solar shading during peak demand, load hours. The balconies also featured planters for privacy and additional screening elements designed as plug-in-play elements of the facade. The team proposed constructing the balconies from lightweight steel outriggers suspended by a network of steel cables, minimizing the thermal bridging and creating a diaphanous scrim for the tower.

To create design interest, they proposed a dramatic horizontal shift in geometry at mid-tower height, as seen in Figure 13.

4.1 DSC Process

Once the design team had settled the overall program and massing of the building, they engaged the DSC team. The designers were looking for guidance on how to modify the form and envelope of the massing to optimize energy and daylight performance. They were also looking for guidance on the impact of the building form shift on building performance, as well as the appropriate dimensions and configurations of the balconies and facade elements.

Figure 13: Residential tower design impression. Inset: proposed tower shift.

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4.2 Objective Definition

According to the City of Vancouver Green Building for Rezoning standards31, which all rezoning applications need to meet, projects have a choice between pursuing Near Zero Emissions Building (NZEB) or Low Emissions Green Building (LEGB). The NZEB pathway requires teams to design projects to Passive House or an alternative similar standard. The key metrics of this pathway are space heating demand at 15 kWh/m2/year, 0.6 ACH @ 50 Pascals pressurization, and maximum 60 kWh/ m2/year renewable primary energy demand.

The LEGB pathway requires LEED Gold Certification32 or an alternate holistic green building rating system. For residential high-rise towers, Total Energy Use Intensity

cannot exceed 120 kWh/m2/year, Total Energy Demand Intensity 32 kWh/m2/year and a Green House Gas Inventory of 6. However, it also has a list of additional requirements, including requirements for whole-building airtightness testing, requirements for enhanced commissioning and about a dozen more provisions. Therefore, the design team wished to understand which of these pathways was most feasible for their design objectives. Were the stringent NZEB Passive House energy requirements attainable or was it better to focus on the less stringent, but more numerous requirements of the LEGB pathway? In addition, the design team sought to optimize energy, daylight and comparative cost considerations.

Figure 14: DSC process for the residential tower massing and facade study.

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Constructing Design Spaces

4.3 Alternative Generation

Which design alternative could meet the rezoning energy requirements, while providing the best daylighting and views at the lowest first cost? In particular, both the developer and the designer wished to use 50 percent window to wall ratio (WWR) on all facades, because daylight and views are an important selling feature in the high-rise condominium market in Vancouver. However, by running preliminary PHPP calculations, the Passive House consultant recommended 42 percent WWR in order to give a better chance of achieving Passive House requirements. The team hoped that DSC would help inform this decision.

Designers understood that balcony design and installation would have an impact on performance considerations. They intended the cantilever balcony to act as a sun-shading device but, at the same time, they considered the installation points as thermal bridges adversely influencing thermal performance of building envelope.

The design team expected DSC to help identify the optimal balcony depth on each facade that provided energy benefits, without compromising daylighting performance or introducing significant thermal bridging.

4.4 Impact Analysis

The team undertook DSC on the Joyce Street project at two levels of the tower, below and above the proposed mid-height shift. The team modeled a representative

level for the levels 14 to 28 above the shift, and another representative level between levels 3 to 13 below the shift. Although the program configuration was different above and below the shift, simulation results found no significant difference in performance. Therefore, generalization from the two selected levels was an adequate approximation.

The Designer and Energy Modeler identified the ranges of relevant input variables as well as the metrics for the design questions discussed above. The Energy Modeler then created the zoning for the analytical model and provided the zone assumptions for the energy simulation. The Data Analyst and the Computational Designer downloaded the ranges of the input variables and the zone input data respectively.

Given the proposed variables and input ranges, the full Design Space included about 2 million alternatives. A Design Space reduction was required. The team used a “design of experiments� method to reduce the design space to 1296 simulations. First, they simulated 64 runs of levels 3 to 13 and levels 14 to 28 to design the experiment. Then, they developed a full factorial design of 1296 simulations based on the results of the simulations. They passed on the results to the computational designer. The Computational Designer modeled the zones processed the zone input data, executed the simulations and posted the results to Design Explorer.

Figure 15: Residential tower typical zoning on levels 3 - 13.

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Figure 16: Residential tower ranges of input variables.

Figure 17: Residential tower partial PCP.

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4.5 Value Assessment

The findings from the residential tower indicated that both Passive House heating demand and cooling demand could be achieved only with an efficient heat recovery system. Both 40 percent WWR and 50 percent WWR met the cooling requirement, and both failed to meet the heating requirement without heat recovery.

Larger (50 percent) WWR was obviously superior in terms of daylighting, and the DSC recommendation was that 50 percent WWR should be further investigated through more detailed modeling. The design team proposed 5 feet deep balconies on north and east facades, and 10 feet balconies on the south and west facades.

There was no significant difference in building performance by reducing the depth of balconies along the south and west facades to 5 feet.

5.0 UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ RESIDENCE MASSING AND ENVELOPE STUDY

The University Students’ Residence project is a 330,000 sq. ft. student housing, dining and conferencing facility located in British Columbia. The project is located at the intersection of two important promenades, and presented an opportunity to strengthen the campus circulation network. The design sought, among other criteria, to incorporate passive design principles, and reduce energy consumption, Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and address future climate resilience, creating a showcase project for the university (Figure 18).

Figure 18: University Students’ Residence, design impression.

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5.1 DSC Process

The design team engaged the authors in the early massing development phases. The key question was which of three massing options was most suitable for design development in terms of optimal energy and daylighting performance. The investigation required three different DSC analytical models to be developed and cross-compared, shown in Figure 19.

Similar to the previous projects, the DSC process involved the four roles of Designer, Energy Analyst, Com-

Figure 19: Massing options for DSC analysis.

Figure 20: Students’ Residence DSC process.

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putational Designer and Data Analyst (Figure 20). The team developed three DSC analytical models based on a typical level from each of the design options (Figure 21). They based the full design space on the inputs shown in Figure 22. “Design of experiments” method was used to define three design spaces of 64 simulations for the three massing options. The team compared the massing options in terms of energy, daylighting and total site energy.

Constructing Design Spaces

5.2 Objective Formulation

The objectives of the students’ residence DSC were to minimize heating and cooling loads, minimize total site energy and to maximize the illuminance values. The input parameters were window to wall ratio along all facade orientations, shading device depth on all orientations, wall U-values, roof U-values, window U-values and window SHGC values (Figure 22).

5.3 Alternative Generation

Since the students’ residence DSC involved three distinct analytical models, it was necessary to combine the analysis into one dataset for comparison purposes.

The team achieved this by using identical input parameters for each analytical model and distinguishing the alternatives by an ID parameter. Three 64 run “design of experiments” were performed, one for each design alternative. The results were combined into a single dataset for comparison purposes.

Figure 21: Students’ Residence DSC massing options and zoning for DSC analysis.

Figure 22: Students’ Residence DSC input parameters.

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5.4 Impact Analysis

In order to compare the three independent samples representing each design alternative, we used an analysis of variance (ANOVA) over the mean values of each sample. We analyzed the three samples for energy performance, as well as for both energy and daylighting. In each case, we constructed a weighted value function to capture the multi-objective value of the responses.

In the case of energy performance, the value function was computed as 0.3*Cooling Load + 0.7*Heating Load to reflect the fact that the climate is heating

dominated. The ANOVA test indicated that there were no significant differences in mean energy performance between the three design options, as seen in Figure 23.

This suggests that energy performance by itself could not distinguish optimal results between the options.

In the case of the multi-objective combination of energy and daylighting, the team computed the value function with all responses getting equal weight. The ANOVA test indicated that there were significant differences between the means of the samples at 90 percent confidence levels, as shown in Figure 24.

Figure 23: Students’ Residence DSC energy performance analysis of variance.

Figure 24: Students’ Residence DSC energy and daylighting analysis of variance.

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Constructing Design Spaces

Figure 25: Students’ Residence DSC independent sample t-tests.

Figure 26: Students’ Residence partial PCP.

In order to establish the specific differences between the samples, independent sample t-tests were used.

These tests indicated that there was no significant difference between sample A and C, but there were statistically significant differences between samples A and B, as well as between sample B and C with sample B having a lower mean value function than A or B (Figure 25). This suggested that sample B was an inferior design option from a performance standpoint, while the design team would need to find other discriminators between options A and C. Figure 26 shows a parallel coordinates plot describing the alternatives and impacts in the design space.

5.5 Value Assessment

Calculating the multi-objective value function for the student’s residence DSC assumed that all output parameters carried equal weight. This means the value function equation was: Value Function = Cooling Load + Heating Load + Site Energy + Illuminance.

Part of the process of calculating value functions involves normalizing output parameters. Normalization is required because different output parameters will have different units with different scales. For a single design

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alternative, the normalized value of an output parameter was calculated as: Normalized Output Value = (Output Value – Min. Output Value) / (Max. Output Value – Min. Output Value).

However, for distinct design alternatives there is the possibility of having different maximum and minimum values for each alternative. This means that the normalization equation cannot be used to compare across alternatives. Instead, the normalized value was calculated by considering the maximum and minimum of all alternatives: Normalized Output Value = (Output Value – Min. Output Value across Alternatives) / (Max. Output Value across Alternatives - Min. Output Value across Alternatives).

6.0 CONCLUSION

We found that although DSC has many benefits, it also has challenges that present an opportunity for further research. DSC is useful for providing decision-making support for a range of early stage design questions. Is the Passive House standard feasible for the project or not? Can we strive for higher window to wall ratios on specific facades, but still maintain a high-performance building envelope at reasonable cost? What is the optimum shading or balcony depth on each orientation of the design?

Unlike conventional building performance analysis, which relies heavily on the judgement of expert energy modelers, DSC is data driven and therefore more objective. The data serves as evidence backing up or disqualifying design preferences. This evidence-based approach increases confidence in design decision making. This in turn reduces uncertainty and allows the architect to engage more effectively with design partners, such as mechanical engineers and cost consultants.

DSC is a more accurate process than conventional building performance analysis. Evidence of this was seen with the design charrette described in Section 3. The human mind is not good at certain tasks, such as assessing the impact of multiple conflicting criteria simultaneously. We need tools like parametric analysis to assist with such determinations. Naboni et al. compared parametric analysis to conventional energy simulation32. They were able to identify design alternatives

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that reduced energy consumption for an experimental building from 98.6 kWh/m2 (designed by conventional simulation) to 8.5 kWh/m2 (designed by parametric analysis).

The DSC process also presents challenges. The first thing to consider is the sheer size of the Design Spaces formulated on real world design spaces. Fully defined Design Spaces will typically be of the order of magnitude of millions or billions of simulations. This is not computationally feasible. One approach to resolving this challenge is to use surrogate models such as regression, “design of experiments” or machine learning. These models reduce the amount of simulations required by learning how to accurately predict output results from a small amount of simulated data.

The second challenge arises from the need to reuse simulated data. Architectural projects, even of the same typology, tend to have significant differences in design problem formulation. This means that it is almost impossible to use simulations from one project on another even though they may have overlapping characteristics.

Even within the same project, multiple alternatives or drastic changes to geometric design can require a new building performance model to be developed. This is inefficient. One possible solution is to use a technique called transfer machine learning33. Using machine learning as a surrogate model, we can train a reusable component of the building performance model, such as a thermal zone, and then apply this component to different projects of similar typology.

The last thing to consider is a design process problem.

How does it relate to other analytical tasks including tasks undertaken by partner consultants, such as mechanical engineers and lighting designers? In order to avoid overlap and redundancy when incorporating DSC into design workflow, it is recommended to carefully process map the workflows together with all project team members.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Cillian Collins and Alex Minard, Jana Foit and Kaz Bremner, and Cirsten Stinn and Kevin Lo for their participation in the DSC process on their respective projects.

Constructing Design Spaces

References

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[3] Machairas, V., Tsangrassoulis, A., and Axarli, K., (2014). “Algorithms for Optimization of Building Design: A Review”, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Vol. 31, pp. 101-112.

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[7] Clevenger, C. M., Haymaker, J. R., and Ehrich, A., (2013). “Design Exploration Assessment Methodology: Testing the Guidance of Design Processes”, Journal of Engineering Design, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 165-184.

[8] Haymaker, J., Bernal, M., Marshall, T. M., Okhoya, V., Szilasi, A., Rezaee, R., Chen, C., Salveson, A., Brechtel, J., Deckinga, L., Hasan, H., Ewing, P., Welle, B., (2018). “Design Space Construction: A Framework to Support Collaborative, Parametric Decision Making”, Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITcon), Vol. 23, pp. 157-178.

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[17] Afsari, K., Bernal, M., Swarts, M., Haymaker, J., Marshall, T., and Martin, K., (2017). “Early Development of a Design Methodology for Harvesting Natural Resources in Buildings”, Proceedings of the XXI International Congress of the Ibero-American Society of Digital Graphics, Concepcion, Chile, November 22-24.

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[21] Diakaki, C., Grigoroudis, E., and Kolokotsa, D., (2008). “Towards a Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for Improving Energy Efficiency in Buildings”, Energy and Buildings, Vol. 40, No. 9, pp.1747-1754.

[22] Murray, S. N., Walsh, B. P., Kelliher, D., and O’Sullivan, D. T. J., (2014). “Multi-Variable Optimization of Thermal Energy Efficiency Retrofitting of Buildings Using Static Modelling and Genetic Algorithms–A Case Study”, Building and Environment, Vol. 75, pp. 98-107.

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[24] Ahmad, M. W., Hippolyte, J. L., Mourshed, M., and Rezgui, Y. “Random Forests and Artificial Neural Network for Predicting Daylight Illuminance and Energy Consumption”, Proceedings of the 15th IBPSA Conference, San Francisco, CA, August 7-9, pp. 1949-1955.

[25] Lartigue, B., Lasternas, B., and Loftness, V., (2014). “Multi-Objective Optimization of Building Envelope for Energy Consumption and Daylight”, Indoor and Built Environment, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 70-80.

[26] Flager, F., Welle, B., Bansal, P., Soremekun, G., and Haymaker, J. (2009). “Multidisciplinary Process Integration and Design Optimization of a Classroom Building”, Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITcon), Vol. 14, No. 38, pp. 595-612.

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[31] City of Vancouver, (2017). Green Buildings Policy for Rezoning – Process and Requirements.

[32] Emanuele Naboni, A. M., Korolija, I., and Zhang, Y., (2013). “Comparison of Conventional, Parametric and Evolutionary Optimization Approaches for the Architectural Design of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings”, Proceedings of the 13th IBPSA Conference, pp. 25592566.

[33] Geyer, P., and Singaravel, S., (2018). “ComponentBased Machine Learning for Performance Prediction in Building Design”, Applied Energy, Vol. 228, pp. 14391453.

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PEER REVIEWERS PHIL BERNSTEIN Yale University

DR. CHANDRA BHAT University of Texas at Austin

GABRIELLE BRAINARD Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

DR. ANDRÉS CAVIERES University of Oklahoma

ELIZABETH GARLAND Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital

DR. MEHLIKA INANICI University of Washington

DR. OMER KARAGUZEL Carnegie Mellon University

DR. KYLE KONIS University of Southern California

NICO LARCO University of Oregon

TALI MEJICOVSKY Arup

DIANA NICHOLAS Drexel University

TROY PETERS Wentworth Institute of Technology

DR. MAGI SARVIMAKI Bond University

LIZ YORK Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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AUTHORS 01.

DAVID CORDELL David is an Associate Principal in the Washington, DC office of Perkins and Will, with a focus on interior environments and their interaction with occupant health, wellness and sustainability. He has led numerous LEED projects, and the American Society of Interior Designers headquarters, the first project in the world to earn Platinum certification under the WELL Building Standard. He has authored several articles for the “Designing for Health” series in Contract Magazine, speaks and writes regularly on topics related to healthy interior environments.

01.

HALEY NELSON Haley is a Senior Associate and Senior Interior Designer in the Washington, DC office of Perkins and Will. Her expertise is in workplace design that supports wellbeing. Many of her projects have achieved the highest levels of LEED certification, have been published, and have won design and sustainability awards. She also played an integral role on the American Society of Interior Designers headquarters, the first project in the world to earn Platinum certification under the WELL Building Standard. She is a thought-leader and has presented at numerous venues on topics ranging from trends in workplace design, design for well-being, and pro bono design.

01.

JON PENNDORF Jon is a Senior Associate in the Washington, DC office of Perkins and Will, where he serves as project manager and sustainability leader. A practicing architect for over 18 years, he also has served as a member of the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) national advisory group and the AIA Strategic Council. Jon has contributed writings on sustainability, resilience, and well-being topics to several local and national publications, including ULI Magazine, the Washington Post, and the National Geographic.

02.

MARK WALSH In his role as Technical Director, Mark oversees the technical design, quality assurance/quality control, and project delivery of all architectural projects delivered

by Perkins and Will Chicago office. With over twenty years of experience in design and construction for corporate, K-12, higher education projects as well as highly technical facilities like laboratories and hospitals. Mark also co-chairs the firm’s Technical Design Community, which examines and advises on issues related to project delivery and building technology.

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AARON KNORR

03.

Aaron is an Architect and Associate in the Perkins and Will Vancouver office. He holds bachelor degrees in Architecture and Geography from the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of British Columbia.

His broad experience at different scales of design has led him to work on projects ranging from higher education and office developments, to transportation and urban design. Aaron is an expert on the integration of emerging transportation technologies into the design of cities.

JOHN HAYMAKER

04 & 05.

John serves as Perkins and Will’s Director of Research, overseeing the firm’s formal investigations into material performance, design process, building technology, resilience, regeneration, and human health and wellness in the built environment.

Previously a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, and a professor of architecture and building construction at Georgia Institute of Technology, John has contributed more than 80 professional and academic articles on topics such as design process communication, optimization, and decision-making.

CHRISTOPHER MEEK

04.

Christopher is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington and Director of the Integrated Design Lab (UW IDL) at the University’s College of Built Environments. His research focuses on the integration of natural systems in building design to improve indoor environmental quality and building energy efficiency. His research has been funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, and the American Institute of Architects.

DEVIN KLEINER

04.

Devin is a project architect with Perkins and Will and leads sustainable design initiative in Seattle office. He co-teaches a Masters in Architecture design studio at the University of Washington on performance-based design. He has worked on numerous innovative projects, receiving awards including the AIA Energy in Design Award, AIA Washington Civic Design Awards, The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), and the Association of College Unions International (ACUI).

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AUTHORS 04.

ROB PENA Rob is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where he teaches architectural design and building science with an emphasis on ecological design and high-performance buildings. With the UW Center for Integrated Design, he is helping convene knowledge communities to re-imagine the future of our cities. Rob works regionally with design teams on the development of high performance and net-zero energy buildings.

04.

HEATHER BURPEE Heather is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Washington and Director of Education and Outreach at the Integrated Design Lab. She is a nationally recognized scholar in high-performance buildings that reduce energy and promote healthy indoor environments. Her work bridges practice, research, and education, addressing both qualitative and quantitative aspects of buildings, including tracking health impacts and synergies between environmental quality, natural systems, sensory environments, and energy efficiency.

04.

WESTON NORWOOD Weston was a designer with Perkins and Will and Research Assistant for the University of Washington graduate design studio. With a Masters of Architecture from the University of Washington, and a Bachelors of Architecture from University of Kansas, Weston is an expert in computational design and analysis, with an emphasis on sustainability.

05.

VICTOR OKHOYA As the Design Applications Manager for the Perkins and Will Vancouver office, Victor is an expert with more than fifteen years’ experience in Building Information Modeling (BIM)/CAD/IT consulting. He is also a researcher, currently completing a Doctorate in Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. He has published papers, written technical articles and presented at industry gatherings. He is a keen enthusiast of computational design and data analytics, and has contributed to firmwide initiatives in both disciplines.

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MARCELO BERNAL

05.

Marcelo holds a PhD in Design Computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and he has developed his career between the professional practice and the academia. He is currently dividing his activities between teaching and research in the Design Process Lab at Perkins and Will. The scope of his area of research includes meta-modeling, multi-criteria optimization to support decision-making, and workflows for design automation. He is also on the board of the International Journal of Architectural Computing, dedicated to advancing computational design in education and professional practice.

CHENEY CHEN

05.

Drawing upon his background in both architecture and building science, Cheney excels at communicating effectively across disciplines to optimize project success.

Cheney completed his PhD with research in the area of total building performance, as well as passive and ecological design strategies. As a highly qualified building energy modeling professional, Cheney is adept at simulation at the initial stages of design, as well as the later stages of evaluating building performance. Cheney’s combination of research and professional practice from both engineering and architectural perspectives enables him to bring well-informed insights and expert simulation skills to a project.

TYRONE MARSHALL

05.

Tyrone has expertise in architectural design, computational design, and biologically inspired design, building technology and science. He specializes in energy performance and environmental impact of buildings, hygrothermal transient heat and moisture transport, daylight analysis, envelope design, life cycle analysis, applied simulation, AEC integration, and critical ecological thinking. Tyrone has more than 17 years of architectural project experience and extensive knowledge in Building Information Modeling (BIM).

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MARK PASVEER

University of Waterloo

Exterior Cladding Systems, Inc.

DR. MARK CLAYTON

DR. PARI RIAHI

Texas A&M University

University of Massachusetts Amherst

HEIDI CREIGHTON

MING TANG

BuroHappold Engineering

University of Cincinnati

DIANE KAUFMAN FREDETTE

DR. MATTHEW J. TROWBRIDGE

Fredette Architects

University of Virginia

Thornton Tomasetti

JEAN WINEMAN University of Michigan

Issue 15 / VOL 08.01

DR. FARID ABDOLHOSSEIN POUR Illinois Institute of Technology

Issue 17 / VOL 09.01 CORTNEY ASBERRY CallisonRTKL

DR. EVANGELIA CHRYSIKON University College London

DANIEL FAORO Lawrence Technological University

LEIGH MIRES

106

Issue 14 / VOL 07.02

Purdue University

DR. RAHMAN AZARI University of Texas at San Antonio

DR. JAMES DUNN McMaster University

DR. OLIVER GRUEBNER Harvard University

DAVID GREEN Perkins and Will

WALTER GRONDZIK Ball State University

MO HARMON Synthesis Design + Architecture

DR. AZZA KAMAL University of Texas at San Antonio

RASHIDA NG Temple University

EDWARD ORLOWSKI

MICHAEL ROBINSON

ARASH GUITY

Lawrence Technological University

College of Architecture, Design and Construction, Auburn University

Mazzetti

DR. ASH RAGHEB Lawrence Technological University

GREGORY TOCCI Cavanaugh Tocci Associates, Inc.

Issue 13 / VOL 07.01 CHRISTINA BOLLO

Issue 11 / VOL 06.01

University of Oregon

TOM BECK

DAVID CHAMBERLAIN

Perkins and Will

Kurt Soloman

YASHASHREE CHITALE

LISA IULO

Perkins and Will

Pennsylvania State University

LEIGH CHRISTY

DIANE NICHOLS

Perkins and Will

Drexel University

DIANA DAVIS

DR. JULIA ROBINSON

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University of Minnesota

TONY LAYNE Perkins and Will

Issue 12 / VOL 06.02

IAN SINNETT Perkins and Will

DR. ABBAS AMINMANSOUR

MARK WALSH

School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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BRIAN WEATHERFORD

BOYD BLACK

Perkins and Will

Visionscapes Landscape Architects Inc.

DR. GEORGE ELVIN

Kennesaw State University

SCOTT MURRAY School of Architecture University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

SEAN O. O’NEILL St. Onge Company

MARY SLADEK North Hennepin Community College

GEOFFREY THÜN Taubman College of Architecture+Urban Planning, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Issue 9 / VOL 05.01 DR. WILLIAM BRAHAM University of Pennsylvania

ALAN JACKSON Case

ALEXIS KAROLIDES Rocky Mountain Institute

BLAIR McCARRY

Facilities Services, University of Chicago

VIRGINIA BURT

DR. JANICE LONG

Issue 10 / VOL 05.02 DR. AJLA AKSAMIJA

Perkins and Will

ADAM McMILLEN Energy Center of Wisconsin

College of Architecture and Planning, Ball State University

Perkins and Will / University of Massachusetts Amherst

DIANA NICHOLAS

ROBERT GERARD

NATHAN BROWN

Arup

Loisos+Ubbelodhe

STEVE SANDERSON

DR. KYOUNG SUN MOON

ADRIENNE DICKERSON

School of Architecture, Yale University

Cadence Health

DR. RALPH MUEHLEISEN

BRIEANNA GOWDY

Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalunya

Argonne National Laboratory

Creative Concepts Consulting

MATT RAIMI

JAN GRIMSLEY

MING TANG

Raimi + Associates

Maestro Strategies

Drexel University Case

SPYROS STRAVORAVDIS

University of Cincinnati

107

RESEARCH JOURNAL / VOL 10.02

Issue 8 / VOL 04.02

DR. THERESE TIERNEY

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GAIL VITTORI

DR. AJLA AKSAMIJA PATRICK CARROLL Perkins and Will

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems

DR. BOWMAN DAVIS Kennesaw State University, Emeritus

ROGER GRUNEISEN Quorum Health Resources

DR. DEBAJYOTI PATI Texas Tech University

BRODIE STEPHENS Perkins and Will

DR. RANA ZADEH Cornell University

Issue 7 / VOL 04.01 JOHANNA BRICKMAN

Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center

PATRICK CAROLL

Issue 6 / VOL 03.02 SCOTT DIETZ

Architecture & Digital Design Computation Savannah College of Art and Design

HILDA ESPINAL Perkins and Will

DR. FRANCOIS GROBLER Construction Engineering Research Laboratory US Army Corps of Engineers

DR. CAROL SUE HOLTZ School of Nursing Kennesaw State University

KAREN KENSEK School of Architecture University of Southern California

Perkins and Will

DR. HYUNJOO KIM

TODD COHEN

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, California State University, Fullerton

MedStar Montgomery Medical Center

WILLIAM CONWAY, FAIA School of Architecture, College of Design University of Minnesota

DR. DANIEL FRIEDMAN College of Built Environments, University of Washington

DR. IVANKA IORDANOVA Pomerleau

DR. PAVANKUMAR MEADATI Southern Polytechnic State University

DR. SINEM KORKMAZ School of Planning, Design & Construction Michigan State University

STEVE SANDERSON Case

DAVID SHEEHAN Perkins and Will

DR. MARDELLE McCUSKEY SHEPLEY

DR. MARDELLE McCUSKEY SHEPLEY

Center for Health Systems & Design Texas A&M University

Center for Health Systems & Design Texas A&M University

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BRIAN SKRIPAC

Issue 5 / VOL 03.01 DR. MOHAMED BOUBEKRI

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; School of Architecture

JOSHUA EMIG Auburn University; College of Architecture, Design and Construction

DR. NEVEEN HAMZA Newcastle University; School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

RICK HINTZ Perkins and Will

DR. IVANKA IORDANOVA Université de Montréal; L’École d’Architecture

DR. JONG-JIN KIM University of Michigan; Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

BRUCE TOMAN Perkins and Will

Issue 4 / VOL 02.02 PATRICK GLENN Perkins and Will

MARK JOLICOEUR Perkins and Will

SANJA KORIC University of Illinois, Facilities and Services

STEVE MILLER Perkins and Will

DR. KYOUNG SUN MOON Yale University, School of Architecture

SCOTT MURRAY University of Illinois, School of Architecture

ABHIJEET PANDE Heschong Mahone Group

SANTOSH PHILIP Loisos + Ubbelohde

TOM SIMPSON Integral

108

Issue 3 / VOL 02.01 DR. AJLA AKSAMIJA

BRYAN SCHABEL

KALPANA KUTTAIAH

Perkins and Will

Perkins and Will

Perkins and Will

BILL SCHMALZ

KAREN ALSCHULER

Perkins and Will

Perkins and Will

CATHY SIMON

IAN BUSH

Perkins and Will

Perkins and Will

MICHAEL DRIEDGER Busby Perkins and Will

BREEZE GLAZER Perkins and Will

DAVID GREEN

SAM SPATA Perkins and Will

RK STEWART Perkins and Will

CHRIS YOUSSEF Perkins and Will

Perkins and Will

ROBIN GUENTHER Perkins and Will

KALPANA KUTTAIAH Perkins and Will

DR. ZAKI MALLASI Perkins and Will

RICH NITZSCHE Perkins and Will

DR. ZAKI MALLASI Perkins and Will

LORI MAZOR New York University

SANTOSH PHILIP Loisos + Ubbelhode

DON SHAFFER Perkins and Will

LINDA SPIVACK Midstate Medical Center

JEFF WILLIAMS Perkins and Will

Issue 2 / VOL 01.02 DR. AJLA AKSAMIJA Perkins and Will

JODY BROWN Pfizer

SEAN GARMAN Perkins and Will

NOTE: Affiliations are listed based on respective Peer Reviewers’ affiliation at the time of publication of individual issues.

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“The two classic sites of architectural research—academies and practices—interact in many ways, but rarely coincide as seamlessly as they have in the Research Journal produced by Perkins and Will. By adopting the academic convention of peer-review with the immediately practical selection of research topics, they have created a productive space for the discipline of architecture to evolve.”

William W. Braham, PhD, FAIA Director, Center for Environmental Building + Design University of Pennsylvania

“Architects are by nature problem solvers and innovators, and the Perkins and Will Research Journal helps to advance research in the profession by collecting results from this process and sharing them freely with the design community. This journal demonstrates that it is possible to integrate research in a design practice while peer review ensures that objective, high-quality and relevant research is published.

Congratulations on the ten-year anniversary and wishing many more years to come!

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It provides information that is hard to find, but essential for any designer!”

Abbas Aminmansour, PhD Associate Professor, Illinois School of Architecture University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“I am an avid follower of the Perkins and Will Research Journal and I often recommend it to our students. The articles are well edited and relevant to the issues that matter to architects, clients, and communities: building performance, worker productivity, environmental resilience, human health, occupant well being, etc. The accessibility of this online and downloadable journal democratizes knowledge and makes it available to practitioners as well as members of the general public, who may not have access to a library. I see it as a model for how to share information among the design professions. Congratulations on your 10th year anniversary issue!”

Thomas Fisher Professor, Director of the Minnesota Design Center University of Minnesota

“The Perkins and Will Research Journal has remained for the 10 years of its existence, on the vanguard of research inquiry, and excellence, that is both practice-oriented and boundary pushing. With knowledge production of the highest order, this deeply cogent journal is a seminal resource for evidence-based and building science situated practitioners and researchers. Serving as an incredibly rich human, material, and systems-oriented resource for those looking to inculcate deep research into high level built environment investigations, we celebrate their 10th year anniversary and look forward to many more issues.”

Diana S. Nicholas, NCIDQ, AIA, NCARB, LEED GA Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Design & Urbanism, Drexel University

“Since the inaugural issue, and for the past decade, the Perkins and Will Research Journal has been an indispensable resource in my knowledge portfolio. Both as reviewer and consumer of its unparalleled richness of research-driven articles, each volume offers diverse and relevant content, unique to our industry. Its value and wide accessibility serve both as a highly credible reference and catalyst for further innovation. Congratulations on 10 successful years and thank you, for continuing to push boundaries and thought-provoke!”

Hilda Espinal, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, CDT, MCSE Chief Technology Officer CannonDesign

“Perkins and Will Research Journal has ceaselessly contributed over the decade to the dissemination of some of the most innovative research projects applicable to a wide range of design challenges, helping create a more sustainable and better performing built environment.”

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