Design practice integration of a daylight analysis tool

Abstract

Building performance tools are an important part of building design and are used to verify functional requirements. For instance, daylight analysis verifies that the access to natural light in the interior space is adequate. Daylight is important for our circadian rhythm, affects our alertness and mood and is of increasing importance as we spend more time indoors. In current practice, forementional analyses of the building are mainly used in retrospect by engineers, after the conceptual design phase of architects. If the building does not fulfill the functional requirements this can lead to expensive changes where critical design ideas are lost. A consequence of rule of thumb approach by architects is lost opportunities during the design phase. It is therefore motivated to have sustainability tools usable for architects in early phase design. However, even though the use of tools is motivated and exist, they are not integrated into the practice to a considerable extent. There is a missing link between the developed tools and the architects, where many of the tools are externally developed and the research regarding these tools is driven by computational performance improvements. To instead focus on the process of tool uptake in architectural practice, this thesis evaluates different educational approaches experimentally to teach and implement an internally developed daylight tool within one architecture practice. The three educational approaches which have been explored experimentally are a presentation for the office, a course for the users, and one-to-one teaching sessions. Each approach is directed to different roles at the office with different objectives and will be evaluated through surveys. In connection to this an interview study has been done to better understand the needs of the architect in relationship to the digital tool. It was found that the different roles at the practice expressed different needs for the tool, where the lack of focus on roles beyond the tool user might explain the lack of uptake of developed tools. The different educational approaches were well-received with new users of the tool, but more approaches were requested, such as a manual for the tool and a presentation focusing on sales for the seniors. A framework explaining the need of the tool has been organised based on the work with this integration, where the need for the tool is divided into four categories, the need for users, functionality, relevance, and credibility.