Multi-objective Optimisation of Building Geometry for Energy Consumption and View Quality

Abstract

In property development, the view quality contributes significantly to the property value. In many cases, the architect is constrained by the property developer to take full advantage of the view by designing large glazed facades ignoring the consequence on the energy consumption of the building caused by the conflicting orientation of the view. This paper presents a design tool to help the architect interactively explore different building and window geometries that trade-off energy consumption (kWh) and view quality (€). This design tool allows interaction with parametric building geometry, simulation of energy consumption and view quality, and an optimisation search engine. The simulation of the view quality quantifies a view according to the visibility and quality of its contents by using a novel view-scoring method. The design tool is tested with both north-oriented and south-oriented views and produces a Pareto front from which resulting geometries are visualised.