Aurecon Buildings carbon sketcher
Aurecon Buildings carbon sketcher
*Aurecon
8/850 Collins Street, Docklands VIC 3006, Australia
[email protected]
Abstract
A lot of the most consequential building design decisions are locked in during the early-design phase.
However, lifecycle assessments are commonly conducted later in the planning phases where the analysis
has limited potential to meaningfully affect the design. It would be ideal to front-load this analysis into
the early-design phase, however, this is challenging since project information at this stage is limited and
the design process is fast-paced. This paper addresses this challenge by creating a user-friendly webtool
for indicative lifecycle assessments to be used during the concept design phase. Existing research has
resulted either in sophisticated software with maximised functionality but limited practicality for early
design or point solutions that often lack the interdisciplinary approach necessary to achieve truly
sustainable outcomes. This tool is novel in that it addresses both embodied and operational emissions,
and both the main structural and façade elements, while considering the margin of error associated with
early-stage assessments and reaching carbon neutrality. It does so as a web-based tool that provides
integrated access to expertise through a highly accessible interface with near real-time feedback. A
unique contribution of the tool is a design automation algorithm that auto-sizes structural members based
on a first-principles approach.
Keywords: parametric design, user-friendly, lifecycle assessment, carbon neutrality, embodied carbon,
operational carbon, agile development, energy modelling, environmental flows, concept design
1. Introduction
Over the past decades, sustainable building design has focused mainly on operational emissions, that is,
those associated with the day-to-day running of the building. With increasing progress on the energy-
efficiency of HVAC systems and high-performance facades, as well as the increasing decarbonisation
of energy grids, the significance of embodied emissions associated with the manufacture and transport
of building materials has risen. Sustainable building design should therefore consider lifecycle
assessments (LCA). In other words, estimating both operational and embodied carbon emissions.
Some of the most impactful building design decisions are made in the early project stages [1]-[3]. At
this point, engineering analysis is commonly limited, while architects are left to make many design
decisions based on tacit knowledge rather than data-driven insights. It is difficult to significantly change
the design after a town planning permit has been lodged, since this process solidifies design expectations
with legal and financial ramifications should the initial design have to be reworked. The issue here is
that the town planning permit tends to lock in the structural system and overall envelope design, both of
which are the greatest contributors to lifecycle emissions [4].
Copyright © 2023 by Max G. MARSCHALL, Jack WALKER, Daniel FITZMAURICE, Hamed SEIFI, Cindy LAM,
Nathan PALEIRET, Darcy CREIGHTON, Qisi ZHENG, James ALLISON, Tristan MORGAN, Pablo SEPULVEDA
and Matthew AUSTIN. Published in the Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023 with permission.
Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication
LCAs are commonly only conducted in the late planning phases. This is a problem as design changes
become increasingly costly as the project proceeds, hence the analyses have limited potential to
meaningfully affect the design (Figure 1). Sustainable building design could be facilitated by ‘front-
loading’ LCAs into the early design phase, but this is challenging since project information at this stage
is limited and the design process iterative and fast-paced. This is a common dilemma that plagues all
aspects of early design and is one that computational designers typically seek to alleviate by developing
algorithms to automate processes and decrease the effort needed to conduct analyses, or by using new
types of tools and visualisation techniques to enhance design processes, or sometimes even by
developing custom software. Compared to other contexts, conducting LCAs for buildings is more
challenging due to the long lifespans of buildings, their complexity, and the multiplicity of stakeholders
involved throughout their design and operation [6]. Any effort to conduct these kinds of analyses in the
early-design stage must be accompanied by an understanding that the results will necessarily be
indicative rather than accurate calculations. These intrinsic error margins should not become a roadblock
to considering sustainable design from the project outset; the uncertainties just need to be expressed
clearly and quantified where possible [7].
While several academics have proposed various theoretical frameworks (e.g., [8], [9]) to tackle the
challenges in conducting early design LCAs, there are now also numerous consultancies that have
developed digital tools for use in practice. This is an emerging field with direct potential impacts on the
sector with the largest contribution to worldwide emissions [4] and therefore warrants deeper research
attention. An analysis of the currently available tools shows a diversity in terms of the approaches and
methodologies followed, the types of user input they require, the scope of carbon-related design tasks
and disciplines considered, and the solution maturity. A lot of the existing tools appear to be in the beta
phase of their development (e.g., [10]-[13]) which demonstrates that this is an emerging field in the
industry. Some tools are specifically intended for browsing existing material emissions databases and
therefore require an existing geometry model (e.g., [10], [12], [14], [15]), while others allow the user to
input top-level geometric data (e.g., building width and length, etc.) and the tool then auto-sizes all
building elements to estimate material volumes (e.g., [11], [13], [16]-[20]). Tools tend to focus on a
specific discipline, typically producing an informed estimate either of the embodied carbon of the
structure or the façade; a search conducted by the authors did not reveal an early design tool within this
space that considered operational carbon.
There appears to be a gap in research to create a tool that:
• Holistically estimates emissions across all major contributors
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• Assesses embodied carbon of the structure and façade as well as operational carbon
• Auto-sizes structural elements in the early design stage where a sophisticated geometric model
(e.g., a reliable Revit model) may not be available for determining material quantities
• Allows exploring the interdependencies between upfront façade emissions versus lifecycle
emissions through operational energy consumption
2. A cross-disciplinary tool
2.1. Aim
The aim of this research was to create a user-friendly design tool for conducting indicative, early-design
stage LCAs and allowing a broad user group to compare design options holistically, for the goal of
reducing lifecycle emissions in building design. A focus of this tool was to enable user groups beyond
sustainability experts to make informed decisions and communicate these to clients, while establishing
a technological framework that retained flexibility for individual domain specialists to maintain and
update algorithms and calculations.
2.2. Requirements
To achieve their aim, the authors developed a webtool called Aurecon Buildings Carbon sketcher
(ABCs). The name was chosen deliberately to indicate the specific intent for using it to design buildings
rather than other asset types. ‘Sketcher’ intends to signal to the user that it is aimed at producing
indicative estimates in schematic design, thereby distinguishing itself from other tools that conduct
specific calculations to determine accurate results for compliance purposes in the later stages.
To fulfil the purposes of an early stage LCA tool, the authors gathered the following requirements from
key stakeholders and domain experts within their home organisation to be addressed by the tool:
• Consider the ‘big-ticket items’ in terms of lifecycle emissions and reaching carbon neutrality that
can be assessed with information levels available in early design. In other words, consider
operational emissions from energy use as well as embodied emissions for the main structural and
façade elements, but exclude items that are unknown in the early design stage and have a lesser
impact on carbon emissions, like interior finishes and furniture.
• Make the tool accessible for a wide stakeholder group by minimising dependencies and user
knowledge of third-party software, and without requiring users to install specialist software
environments on their local computer hardware.
• Build it in a modular way from several domain-specific modules that can be maintained over time
by subject matter experts from different disciplines.
• Design the tool in a way that caters to about 95% of Aurecon building projects in terms of
allowable geometric complexity and building usages.
• Design the tool for a user group consisting of environmentally sustainable design (ESD)
consultants, mechanical, structural, and façade engineers.
• Assume the user does not have a detailed geometric model when using the tool. That is, the tool
should auto-size structural elements based on the overall building massing.
• Develop ways to communicate to the user that the estimates generated by the tool are indicative
and convey a margin of error.
In essence, the overarching requirement for the development of the tool was to enable interdisciplinary
design exploration to generate holistic low emission strategies in the early building design stage.
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Integration of Design and Fabrication
Figure 2. Overall software architecture and Grasshopper definitions contained within ABCs.
Figure 3. Developing, maintaining, and interacting with the tool. *See Figure 2
2.4. UI/UX
ABCs was designed to have a highly accessible and easy-to-use user interface and user experience
(UI/UX), enabling a broad user group extending beyond computational designers, sustainability experts,
and engineers. Rather than automating an existing process [21], the webtool proposes novel affordances
that democratise and demystify the relationship between early-stage design decisions and emissions. In
doing so, the webtool not only provides key insights to impact design, but also clearly illustrates
relationships and sensitivities, supporting users to further develop their understanding of LCA and ESD.
During development, the authors conducted frequent demonstrations of ABCs’ UI/UX design to collect
feedback from subject matter experts. This helped design a highly accessible and easy-to-use tool. For
example, the team discovered that one of the main roadblocks preventing from people using an earlier
version of ABCs was that it had been built purely as a Grasshopper tool. As a result, ABCs was built as
a webtool that does not require any installations or specialised domain knowledge to use. It has a job
management system in which the user can create ‘projects’; each project can have several ‘studies’, and
each study can have several design ‘options’ to be compared in a dashboard view side-by-side (Figure
5). Clicking on a design option from a study page brings up the main UI (Figure 7).
The main UI consists of two columns: user inputs on the left and result visualisations on the right. The
columns are sub-divided into logical sections that clearly differentiate between different disciplines;
input sections including ‘Building’, ‘Structure’, ‘Façade’, ‘Shading’, ‘Materials’, and ‘Operation’, and
output sections including ‘Geometry’, ‘Embodied Carbon’, ‘Operational Carbon’, and ‘Carbon
Neutrality’. The interface does not freeze while waiting for simulation results to be produced; instead,
the visualisation sections that are awaiting data are blurred out until the results become available while
the user can keep navigating the UI. It includes an interactive Speckle 3D viewer displaying the
structural, façade, and PV panel geometries.
The UI/UX was designed to convey the inherent uncertainties in early-stage LCA analysis. This was
done by including a welcome page, guided tour, and documentation that describe the intent, assumptions,
and limitations of the tool. Result data is expressed in round numbers so as not to convey a false sense
of accuracy [7]. As described in Section 2.10, embodied carbon is calculated using ‘high’, ‘medium’,
and ‘low’ scenarios that are displayed side-by-side in the UI for the user to consider the variance of
environmental impact across different materials.
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Integration of Design and Fabrication
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Integration of Design and Fabrication
Figure 7. ABCs web UI. Each parameter panel reflects a Grasshopper definition executed with Rhino.Compute.
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Integration of Design and Fabrication
Figure 8. Examples of energy modelling simplifications. Left: ABCs allows either considering each floor as a
single thermal zone, or as a core and several perimeter zones. Right: Only unique floors are considered.
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3. Reflections
Our analysis led to several general insights and lessons learnt regarding the development of early-design
lifecycle assessment tools. These are described in the following sub-sections.
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discipline may cause a detriment to another discipline. For example, while introducing shading fins
might reduce operational cooling energy emissions, these fins tend to be constructed from aluminium
that is so high in embodied carbon that it might not pay off over the building lifecycle. Therefore, any
tool developed to address this issue should consider a cross-disciplinary approach.
4. Conclusion
Reducing both up-front and operational emissions in the built environment has become increasingly
crucial, as it accounts for a significant portion of global emissions. However, the industry faces a
complex challenge due to a variety of factors. Firstly, operational emissions depend on local conditions,
such as climate, site characteristics, and the emission intensity per kWh of the regional power grid.
Secondly, in a global economy, the up-front emissions for the same material can vary greatly. Lastly,
the technical and interdisciplinary expertise required to define a low-emission building can be
overwhelming.
Without an interdisciplinary approach and a tool that considers the specificities of each project, it is
difficult to develop a low-carbon strategy that properly considers the project context. By focusing on
major carbon contributors and understanding the interdependencies between different fields, the tool
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proposed by the authors within the current research aims to establish a solid foundation in the early
design stage for low-emission buildings.
The research led to several more general conclusions on developing early-design lifecycle assessment
tools. For example, their purpose should likely be to inform a design strategy rather than a finalised
design; developers should accept that the results will be indicative and design a user interface that
illustrates margins of error. Most development decisions will be related to finding an acceptable trade-
off between flexibility and accuracy. Importantly, carbon footprint reduction is best tackled as an
interdisciplinary design practice.
5. Future research
The authors seek to deepen the research in future by considering the following factors:
• Increase functionality and options: For example, include other façade and structural system types,
and the embodied carbon of services.
• Revised carbon factors: Replace the current indicative carbon factors by ones based on an
extensive data analysis of large LCA databases; also include other emissions metrics.
• Benchmarking: The ability to get an LCA “score” for a given design option (e.g., using [22])
• Cost: Considering the cost impact of different design features.
• Machine learning: ABCs logs all design options ever simulated by its users. Once a sizable
database has been generated, the authors intend to use it to generate new insights and conduct
predictive modelling to decrease simulation times
• Horizontal extension: The authors intend to create variations of tools like ABCs but geared toward
other markets and asset types. The way that ABCs has been developed (see Section 2.3)
specifically facilitates reuse and extension of this kind
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