DESIGN4Energy. Developing design methods for energy-efficient buildings

The problem

Designing energy efficient buildings is an essential part of creating a sustainable future for us all.

Understanding the short-term energy efficiency of a building is a relatively straightforward process. But how well will the building perform in the future? Does it take advantage of the local energy matrix? Will future user behaviour and demand change? What maintenance requirements will the building’s energy system have over its lifetime?

Being able to answer these and other critical questions before construction begins will lead to more accurate design decisions being made and more sustainable, energy efficient buildings being built.

The Design4Energy project aimed to develop an innovative Integrated Evolutionary Design Methodology to predict the current and future energy efficiency of proposed buildings at an individual and neighbourhood level.

The methodology required the development of a sophisticated technology platform allowing stakeholders to consider short-term energy performance as well as future scenarios, including important factors such as deterioration curves, technology evolution, climate change effect, users, energy neighbourhood configuration and continuous commissioning alternatives. It needed to enable the evaluation of the impact of these variables on the Building Life Energy Performance and allow stakeholders to explore various design options and make validated and qualified choices as early as possible.

Our solution

Developed alongside key project partners, our platform gathers information from multiple data points.

It presents this data in an innovative 3D virtual workspace allowing various stakeholders to collectively interact with the buildings, explore ‘what-if’ scenarios and assess the building and/or neighbourhood level impact of various energy solutions at the design stage.