Performer, consumer or expert? A critical review of building performance simulation training paradigms for building design decision-making

Abstract

In response to swift changes in the building industry, and the need to evaluate impacts of design decisions for energy-efficiency and legislation, universities are introducing training initiatives in building performance simulation (BPS) for building design decision-making. This work aims to identify and discuss prevalent paradigms used to teach BPS. Through a comprehensive and critical literature review, three paradigms are found: training the simulation ‘expert’ and training the architecture student to become either a ‘consumer’ or ‘performer’ of simulations. Examples from the literature are presented to illustrate each paradigm, followed by a discussion of where trainees of each paradigm would be situated in practical project environments. Recognizing these paradigms serves as a foundation to set up future teaching initiatives and research in this area. However, there is a need for members of both architecture and BPS communities to work together towards harmonizing distinguishing features of each paradigm, to fully exploit the potentials offered by them.

Keywords:

• BPS training
• critical literature review
• paradigms

Notes

1 There are no formal studies discussing the use of these kinds of resources in the academic literature, meaning that it is not possible to report on them.

2 Examples of these include the engineering postgraduate course undertaken at Carleton University in Canada and the Master of Science module delivered at Loughborough University in the UK described by Beausoleil-Morrison and Hopfe (2015, 2016a, 2016b). The Master of Energy Efficient and Sustainable Buildings programme at the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT university in Australia, described by Rajagopalan, Wong, and Andamon (2016) is another example. These kinds of programmes are not always exclusive to architects, and tend to attract multi-disciplinary student cohorts from mechanical engineering, building services and architectural technology backgrounds (Bernier et al. 2016). Nevertheless, growing numbers of architecture students and/or graduates are enrolling in such programmes in response to market requirements. While these degree-programmes remain optional to architectural graduates with an interest in sustainability, energy efficiency, LEED accreditation, etc. these types of programmes constitute an important form of continuing education and training for architects willing to specialize in these areas.

3 While the intention is for this paper to serve as a comprehensive review, and to therefore cover worldwide BPS teaching initiatives, as stated in the introductory section, the majority of works covered in this review originate from English-speaking countries. Out of the 37 articles included in the review (shown in Table 1) 9 of these originate from the UK, 19 originate from universities in the USA and Canada and 2 come from Australia. Only 9 publications found originate from non-English speaking countries (Germany, Brazil, Chile, Turkey and Egypt) and were published in the English language. Therefore, while this review is intended to be comprehensive in that it covers all works found, the authors do not claim that the teaching of BPS in all parts of the world occurs in the same way, as not all world regions are equally represented in this paper.

4 For a detailed discussion of how placing BPS in architectural hands may improve the design process, please read Augenbroe (2001), Clarke (2001) and Attia et al. (2009, 2012).

5 In these initiatives, the collaborative initiative is intended to train architecture students to become ‘consumers’ of both BPS and data acquisition (DA) information and outputs. However, as DA is outside the focused scope of this work, any discussion of DA has been discounted from this review.