Energy Modelling in Architecture: A Practice Guide

A practice guide

Sonja Oliviera, Bill Gething, Elena Marco

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000033915
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book offers a practical guide to embedding energy modelling in architectural practice. With expert contributions from leading architects and practices, this book illustrates architects' approaches to learning, sharing and integrating energy modelling across a range of design projects, in both small and large firms in the UK and internationally. Discussing the practical and business implications of embedding energy modelling in practice, this is an essential manual for the energy-literate architect.

1
An introduction to energy modelling

Introduction

Energy modelling in architecture has traditionally been the domain of the building services engineer, and typically has been used to verify the energy performance of a building design that is well advanced. At this stage, it is rarely possible to make any significant changes to the design without incurring major costs and delays, and opportunities to address fundamental flaws in the environmental aspects of the design will certainly have been missed. However, with recent advances in digital design technology, improved and more accessible simulation tools, and increasing emphasis on narrowing the energy performance gap, uptake of energy modelling tools by architects to inform early-stage design has been growing, both in the UK and internationally.

This book represents a compilation of early-adopter architecture firms’ experiences, ideas and processes for integrating energy analysis and modelling across a range of scales of practice and project typologies. The book is not primarily about technology or the technical expertise needed to undertake energy analysis. Rather, it focuses on the social and organisational processes that might enable effective energy analysis and modelling integration in architecture practice.

Embedding energy modelling into architecture practice is not straightforward, with early-adopter firms needing to develop new internal working arrangements and organisational structures, and new design methods. Many of the firms featured in this book found ways of integrating to vary depending on the type of project and also the scale of the practice (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Integration of energy modelling across scales and typologies of projects and architectural practice

Chapter 1 introduces the findings from a research study into large UK architecture firms’ approaches to integrating energy analysis and modelling across a range of projects. Parts 2, 3 and 4 of the book outline different-sized firms’ approaches to integrating energy analysis and modelling, as viewed by the architects themselves. They recount different approaches to people, process and practice in the context of energy design in architecture.

Part 2 outlines the experiences of small firms, highlighting the importance of detail, personal stories and resource efficiency. For many of the small firms, there is an important evolution of skill, expertise and ability that is continuously documented, discussed and shared. Part 3 describes insights drawn from medium-sized firms, emphasising the importance of experimentation and relationship-building with design teams and other disciplines. Part 4 looks at the approaches of large firms, focused on developing and maintaining a consistent narrative across multiple office locations and teams. Here the importance of leadership across and between teams is highlighted.

Across all scales of firm and project, different organisational processes are highlighted and reflected on, including the importance of adjusting design workflows to include effective analysis, building and investing in appropriate resources within teams and firms, upskilling and learning how other design professionals including energy modellers might offer input, and experimenting with data and information across design cycles.

Finally, the conclusion explores potential future directions in both practice and higher education, highlighting the need for educational and practice approaches that build interdisciplinary social and organisational knowledge, skill and ability in addition to digital design expertise. The advancement of socio-organisational skill might allow for and enable not only analytical empathy for energy modelling, but other equally relevant and interconnected environmental, economic and social design needs.

We warmly thank the authors of the chapters for joining us in this undertaking. The combined contributions of the authors, editors, reviewers and others kept us continually aware of what a collaborative and collective social and organisational practice energy modelling in architecture is.

Chapter 1:
Organisational responses to energy modelling in architecture

Energy analysis in architecture – whose role is it anyway?

Building services engineers have traditionally carried out energy analysis and modelling in building design. In their modelling work, emphasis is often placed on verifying established simulation models at late stages of design. However, calls for greater analytical input at the early stages of design mean that architects’ involvement in energy modelling has become increasingly critical.

Recently, leading architectural firms in the UK and internationally have begun energy modelling processes at early stages of design within their practice, as evidenced in this book. Though there is widespread consensus that architects need to engage in these early energy modelling processes, the focus in practice, research and policy has been primarily on upskilling of technical expertise and knowledge.¹ Very often though, as illustrated in this book, the knowledge, ability and skill needs are not only technical, but social and organisational.

Chapter 2’s reflections by Prewett Bizley suggest a need in small practice for social and organisational adaptation of the role of the architect to find ways of better understanding and analysing the ‘energy’ problems across projects. This better understanding involves development of bespoke tools to analyse specific ‘energy’ issues across projects. There was, as Prewett Bizley describe, ‘no engineer to do the calculations’. Meanwhile Chapter 6’s discussions by Henning Larsen suggest a need for organisational expansion of analytical skill drawn out of diverse disciplinary expertise, such as in-house research – a model that others in this book have adopted as a way to develop organisational analytical capacity. Their ‘proactive search for outside knowledge’ is described as a key ‘defining element’ of their approach to integration of energy modelling across projects. Chapter 9’s description of an evolving approach by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios similarly evokes a sense of trying to find what knowledge counts, and how to sustain and strengthen it in different teams dispersed across office locations.

In all the chapters in this book, questions of role pervade. The blurring of design need, skill and knowledge to enable analytical processes, often handed over to others, is continuously called on and reinforced. Broadening use of energy modelling to new user groups at early stages of design, and architects in particular, is viewed as a key way to enable improved analysis and prediction of building performance.

Though there are increasing calls for upskilling and retraining the UK construction workforce to meet increasingly stringent energy targets, how practice and higher education are responding remains largely undocumented. The following discussion begins to unpack some of the potential constraints to pathways being developed in large UK firms, drawn out of findings of a research study conducted by the editors.

Approaches to learning and sharing energy modelling outputs – findings from large UK firms

In recent studies conducted by the editors,² it was found that methods of learning, sharing and organising had diverse effects on whether, how and if energy modelling took place. In one of the studies, four large UK architecture firms participated in a series of focus group sessions and interviews, to understand how architects approached the implementation of energy modelling in their projects. The focus was to speak to a range of practice roles, including architectural technologists, project architects, and associate directors as well as directors in order to gather a range of experiences and approaches. In this instance, the energy modelling processes primarily referred to the implementation and potential use of Sefaira, cloud-based environmental building design and analysis software.

Interviews and focus group sessions were semi-structured and addressed the following themes: the role and background of a participant within the organisation, learning approaches to using the modelling tools, reasons for using the tools and methods for sharing ‘modelling’ knowledge with the client and building services engineer. Interviews and focus group sessions lasted between 45 and 60 minutes. A total of 52 participants took part across four large firms based in the UK.

When discussing learning approaches, most participants found the tool features easy to understand and learn (see Figure 1). For many, learning was organised through training sessions, but while these were found to be helpful, some participants conveyed their need to trial things outside of project fee-paying time. Learning overall was motivated by personal interest, rather than project or organisational need. ‘Personal views are seen to largely support a moral, environmental and societal responsibility towards delivering considered design approaches.’³ While learning was viewed as valuable, the application of acquired skill or knowledge was described as being difficult, dependent on others and often reliant on project needs. Client interests and needs as well as a firm’s culture and approach to energy analysis were seen to be driving how and if energy modelling could be integrated.

Figure 1: Learning approaches to integrating energy modelling in practice⁴

Where knowledge had been applied, the outputs of energy modelling and analysis were often discounted in favour of other design decisions such as aesthetics. Design responsibilities and sharing of outputs were seen as shrouded in potential liability risks. Participants, while recognising the need to engage and effectively apply energy analysis, would often point out that the responsibility for energy modelling outputs lay with building services engineers rather than architects. Current use of energy modelling as discussed within this study does suggest the development of a two-tier approach, whereby architects use the tools in-house to inform their design, while responsibility for the final modelling outputs lies with others in the design process.

Learning and application of knowledge, skill and ability can be bound by organisational and social issues. In the case of the firms that participated, these issues were mainly manifested through discussions of project and organisational interests and drivers, as well as notions of professionally bound responsibility, liabilities and risk – all of which constrained or enabled embedding of energy modelling in projects. In the case of this study, the findings reveal constraints. However, Parts 2 to 4 of this book discuss how the organisational and social context enabled an embedded approach, integrating energy modelling to effectively inform early design decisions.

The following section draws on experiences in higher education where an interdisciplinary curriculum design enables the blurring of the architect/engineer roles. This suggests an approach by firms in this book that facilitates a potential pathway towards embedding integrated design in practice, and energy modelling in particular.

Experiences from higher education – interdisciplinary pathways

Most studies that have examined some aspects of energy efficiency teaching in higher education curricula have not focused on particular disciplinary approaches, nor have they included design professions. Rather, the emphasis has mostly been on measuring energy literacy and understanding students’ energy-efficient beh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• About the editors
• Case study contributors
• 1 An introduction to energy modelling
• 2 Small firms
• 3 Medium firms
• 4 Large firms
• 5 Conclusions
• References
• Index
• Image credits