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Impacts of architectural beauty to building energy performance

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Abstract

Consideration of architectural beauty in the built environment is growing as the broader concept of sustainable design replaces the more narrowly defined concepts of high performance or green building. This work is a part of Beauty in Building (BiB) research conducted by a team of architects and engineers working to understand links between architectural beauty and building performance. This work presents the exploration findings on what impact architectural beauty may have on building energy performance. A sample of 35 case studies contrasting high performing buildings with architecturally beautiful and high performing buildings was evaluated using the developed BiB matrix. Features that distinguished the best performing buildings from the rest of the sample population were identified based on the results of the case study evaluation. Building energy models representing these building features were then developed for quantitative evaluation of energy performance through energy simulation. Relative importance to beauty and energy performance of each of the features was determined and presented as weighting factors. The results illustrate those features that exhibited density, a combination of multiple systems, in the designs offered better performance relative to both beauty and energy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder, UCB 428, ECOT 441, Boulder, CO, 80309-0428, USA

    W. Michael Goodrum & Zhiqiang John Zhai

  2. PatternMapping Institute, 3183 8th Street, Boulder, CO, 80304, USA

    ml Robles

Authors
  1. W. Michael Goodrum
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  2. Zhiqiang John Zhai
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  3. ml Robles
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhiqiang John Zhai.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Appendix

Appendix

In addition to the composite weighting factors for energy use per building area included in Table 15, composite weighting factors for heating energy and cooling energy were also compiled, allowing consideration of the importance of building features for different climates or building applications that may be predominantly heating or predominantly cooling. The composite weighting factors for heating energy are included in Appendix Table 17 and the composite weighting factors for cooling energy are included in Appendix Table 18.

Table 17 Composite Weighting Factors – Heating Energy
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Table 18 Composite Weighting Factors – Cooling Energy
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Goodrum, W.M., Zhai, Z.J. & Robles, m. Impacts of architectural beauty to building energy performance. Archit. Struct. Constr. 3, 87–111 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44150-023-00083-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44150-023-00083-y

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