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Guest Editor

Department of Engineering Technology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA
Interests: sustainable building design and operation; building performance simulation; solar energy integration in buildings; advanced building controls

Dr. Atefe Makhmalbaf

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Guest Editor

School of Architecture, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA
Interests: performance-based building design; sustainable and resilient built environment; design decision making; advanced building controls

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Buildings play a significant role in the achievement of a decarbonized and sustainable society. Over the years, tremendous efforts have been made in sustainable building design, with the key objectives of minimizing resource consumption and creating a healthy and productive built environment for the occupants. Meanwhile, keeping the sustainable operation of buildings is also important, with requirements that include performance monitoring and tracking, preventative maintenance, and fault detection and diagnosis. Therefore, the successful practice of sustainable buildings must consider the entire building life cycle, covering the stages starting from the design, construction, and operation of the building to its termination. Sustainable buildings require a collective effort from urban planners, architects, building system deisgners, building operators and mangers, energy service providers, and occupants.

This Special Issue aims to create a platform for researchers and practioners to share the advanced developments, current good practices, and lessons learned in the pursuit of sustainable building design and operation. Studies related to the interaction and integration between building design and operation for sustainable development are especially welcome. This Special Issue is inviting papers that cover, but are not limited to, the following:

Passive building design;
Vernacular arichtecture;
Sustainable building materials;
Energy efficiency in buildings;
Water efficiency in buildings;
Healthy and productive indoor environments;
Building integrated renewable energy systems;
Approaches and tehnologies for sustainable building operation management;
Sustainble communities;
Building life-cycle assessment.

Dr. Weimin Wang
Dr. Atefe Makhmalbaf
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

passive design stratgies
building renewable energy
building life-cycle assessment
sustainable building
building operational efficiency
resilient built environment
building energy equity
grid-interactive building operation

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

Open AccessArticle

Optimizing Buildings’ Life Cycle Performance While Allowing Diversity in the Early Design Stage

and

Sustainability 2022, 14(14), 8316; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148316 - 07 Jul 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 837

Abstract

The main considerations in the early stage of architectural design are usually related to form and function. At the same time, with the growing concern regarding energy saving and carbon emission reduction, the parameters for the construction and physical quality of buildings are receiving more attention at the conceptual and schematic design stages. Diverse design options can emerge with the large number of variables to be considered in these stages. Moreover, the combined efforts to reduce buildings’ life cycle environmental impacts and cost, as well as the non-linear and often tradeoff relationship between the two objectives, make finding optimal design solutions for buildings’ life cycle performance complicated. Previous studies have established workflows to optimize buildings’ life cycle energy consumption, GWP, and/or cost; however, architectural design diversity has not been sufficiently discussed at the same time. In this study, a parametric optimization design process is established, aiming at minimizing the building’s operational energy consumption, life cycle environmental impacts, and life cycle cost. The setting of variables, as well as the workflows of the optimization process, is discussed from the perspective of both life cycle performance and architectural design diversity. A small-scale exhibition hall in China’s cold climate zone is selected as a case study. To approach the best design process applicable to this case, the optimal solution sets from different workflows under different variable settings are compared. The results show that by setting geometric and material variables in different steps in the entire optimization process, the resulting solutions can be a balance of architectural design and performance. In this case study, optimizing all of the design variables in one-step turned out to provide the best balance between design diversity and life cycle performance in the early design stage. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Building Design and Operation)

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