Carpenters live by the motto “Measure twice, cut once” – meaning that if you double-check your measurements before picking up the saw, you’re less likely to waste materials and other resources.

In general, getting as much information as possible before making pivotal decisions is a good idea. In sustainable building design, it means considering many factors – location, climate, materials, available sunlight – before commencing design and construction.

A team from the Environmental Systems Lab, led by recent graduate Allison Bernett, M.Arch ’20, has put forth a new framework for injecting as much information as possible into the pre-design and early design phases of a project, potentially saving architects and design teams time and money down the road.1

Principle investigators are Timur Dogan, assistant professor of architecture in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning; and Katharina Kral, a licensed architect and lecturer in the Department of Architecture.2

In 2018, according to the International Energy Agency, the construction sector accounted for 39% of energy and process-related greenhouse gas emissions. That included 11% originating from the manufacturing of building materials and products. The Sustainability Evaluation for Early Design (SEED) Framework is a decision-making tool that can dynamically and concurrently simulate several variables: building energy performance; embodied carbon (carbon emissions generated by construction and materials); construction cost; and daylighting (the use of natural light to illuminate indoor spaces).

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• 1. “(Our framework) allows designers to understand the full environmental impact of their building,” said Bernett, corresponding author of “Sustainability Evaluation for Early Design (SEED) Framework for Energy Use, Embodied Carbon, Cost, and Daylighting Assessment” which published Jan. 10 in the Journal of Building Performance Simulation.
• 2. “How we look at this is, there’s the cost of change in the design process, and then the opportunity of impact,” Dogan said. “In the very beginning, changing something doesn’t cost anything, but if you’re a month into the project, changing something is really expensive, because now you have to rehire consultants and redesign things. “And then the other thing is the potential of impact,” he said. “In the very beginning, just with a simple nudge in the right direction, you can change a project from being an energy hog to something that’s very sustainable, and integrates well into the environment.”