Using Simulations in Development of Comfortable Urban Spaces and Sustainable Design

With the new functionalities and plug-ins for Revit software—such as Lighting Analysis for Revit software, Green Building Studio web-based energy analysis service, the Tally app, and the Dynamo visual programming language extension—new potentials have emerged during the last year. These developments have not only led to much easier workflows, but also to a more holistic analysis of the building performance and urban comfort studies. In this lecture, these new potentials, workflows, and methods for visualizing simulations are shown based on various consultancy tasks and a research project that seeks to add knowledge to architects' design processes as supported with simulation tools. The research project also included a workshop where participants tested methods on unskilled architectural students. We will wrap this all up in the lecture and relate it to model detail levels, instead of the typical schematic design process related to design phases. In many cases, this does not reflect the actual design process. Design development is done in various detail levels at the same time, especially in the early design phases.