Educational Architecture-Oriented Software Linking Conceptual Design and Solar Intensity1

Fundamental architectural decisions such as a building’s form and orientation greatly influence the energy performance of a building. As these decisions are taken very early in the design process, it is important for the designer to consider such performance when comparing design alternatives. Unfortunately, this is rarely done by architects. The reason can be easily tracked to the way most architects learn about energy. Simple charts and some rules of thumb are preferred over complex calculations used by engineers and energy specialists. This paper presents an experiment conducted by the writer to tackle this problem. The writer used a purpose-made software program that is developed to help architecture students learn the impact of the conceptual design decisions on the expected energy performance of a building represented in the solar intensity on the building surfaces. The paper describes the capabilities and the structure of the software program as well as the context and the results of the experiment.