Exploring Integrated Design Process for Sustainable Urbanism

1. DS BE - DOCTORAL SEMINAR ON SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT _ 21ST MAY
Exploring Integrated design
process for sustainable urbanism
PhD student: Séverine Hermand severine.hermand@ulb.ac.be
Supervisor : Philippe Bouillard & Ahmed Z. Khan
B U I L D I N G , ARC H I T EC T U R E AND TOWN P L A N N I N G

2. Thesubject
Developing a context-specific
and scale-sensitive Integrated
Design Process (IDP) for
sustainable urbanism (SU)
through triangulated analysis
of urban form (including
infrastructure), bioclimatism
and energy efficiency in the
context of Brussels Capital
Region (BCR)
URBAN
FORM
DESIGN
BIOCLIMATISM ENERGY

3. The broader framework of developing IDP for SU owes:
• Primarily existing urban design methods and tools are
not investigated enough from an integrated perspective
• Secondly, most of the existing sustainability
assessment systems are useful tools for an IDP at the
building scale

4. Main questions
How to identify and link the main structural components of the
morphology of urban open spaces that have an impact on energy
consumption of the building surrounding?
• What is the role of a morphological study of open spaces in relation to
the energetic needs?
• How can the European capital, Brussels, address this?
• What are the main tools at our disposal to perform quantitative and
qualitative analysis of energetic effects of open spaces on their built
environment?

5. A
Inspection of
basics
B
Analysis of
Issue
Context
C
Design
Process
Framework
D
Guideline
and
recommenda
tion
Neighborhood District City
Scale analysis
Interrelation: Integrated design strategies Generic Process
Key Issues and recommendations
Investigation of
Methods / Tools
Case studies Framework
Method of work

6. Thestateoftheart

7. Why Integrated Design?
The fundamental process of integrated design is the search for synergies.
Synergistic strategies create benefits greater than the sum of the individual design decisions.
2006 Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory, University of Oregon, and Konstrukt

8. IDPDefinitions
ƒ IDP has been seen as the process by which multi-disciplinary building design
teams form early and work together throughout the project schedule.
ƒ Specific definition of the IDP is a discovery process optimizing the elements that
comprise all building projects and their interrelationships across increasingly larger
fields in the service of efficient and effective use of resources.
ƒ The synthesis of climate, use, loads, and systems resulting in a comfortable and
productive environment and a building that is more energy-efficient than current
best practices
ƒ A term that characterizes what architects and architecture students do when they
incorporate the energy, site and climate, construction, programmatic, regulatory,
economic and social aspects of a project as primary parameters in the design

9. IDP at the building scale level
Linearity, Iteration, Integration
ƒ Increasing pressure on building developers and
designers caused by a rapidly changing market
ƒ Adaptability and flexibility during entire life-cycle
ƒ High energy performance expectations
ƒ Increasing requirements caused by high
complexity
ƒ A steadily growing consciousness about the
environment

10. IDP at the urban scale level
Overlapping between spatial scales and analytical tools,
source: S. Hermand 2013
Our intention behind the choice
and the overlapping of the
structural indicators is to keep the
complexity of the city’s structure
while structuring it in order to
understand the mechanisms.
Modelling the interaction between
all these indicators can be a way
to understand and assess the
energy performances of an urban
fabric.

11. Focus on the 3 integrated design strategies
Urban Form Design
Urban form is often considered as resulting from the build
construction. View it instead as a resource
“An efficient fabric alone can reduce energy consumption
and carbon emissions by a factor of 2” (Salat 2011)
Energy
The analysis of energy is used to
model the interaction between the
energy flow, incomes and outcomes
Bioclimatism
Employing bioclimatism design
strategy to enhance energy
performance.
URBAN
FORM
DESIGN
BIOCLIMATISM ENERGY
Needs
Needs
Consideration of use, schedule,
and comfort criteria as malleable

12. Why Urban Form ?
A. Cluzet, (2012)
“Oslo produces ten times less greenhouse gas
emissions per capita than Melbourne, despite
comparable level of life”
S. Salat, (2011)
”An efficient fabric alone can reduce energy
consumption and carbon emissions by a factor of
2”
Climate
Urban Form
Building physics (architecture,
materials)
Systems (heating/cooling
systems)
Occupans’ behaviour
Ÿ Degree of freedom seems to be available in
the urban design
Ÿ This means that Urban Morphology has the
potential to halve a city’s energy and carbon
emissions

13. URBAN
FORM
What it is What it’s useful for How it’s done
Urban
Morphology
Figure-ground
mapping
Typological
analysis
Materials and
components
analysis
Analysis techniques used to
study the present and past
historical patterns of urban
structure, form, land use and
patterns.
Defining urban patterns
and characteristics that
create a unique sense of
place. It helps in the
appraisal of successful and
unsuccessful urban form,
and can examine the
processes that shaped past
change, or features that
persist in the present urban
fabric.
Characteristics of an
urban area, such as its
buildings, lots, blocks,
street patterns, open
space, land-use
activities and building
details, are recorded,
measured, mapped and
analyzed using existing
and/or historical
information.
Tissue
Analysis
Urban tissue
A technique that overlays a
known and understood scale
plan or aerial photograph of
existing buildings, lots, blocks
and street patterns onto a vacant
site as a rapid means of
generating design options.
Rapid generation of initial
design options for sites and
neighborhoods that
promote informed
design discussion
Aerial photographs or
plans of existing, known
and understood
buildings, lots, blocks
and street
patterns are
manipulated and
modified to achieve a
best fit or a series of
different options on a
vacant site or
neighborhood.
Space Syntax
Analysis
Set of theories and techniques
that analyze how street
networks are connected through
mapping the spatial
configurations and accessibility
of open spaces and street
patterns.
Explaining why certain
streets and spaces are more
heavily used than others.
Space syntax maps the
relative accessibility of
parts of a site,
neighborhood or city and
identifies the
areas where improvements
in access can be made.
The technique
determines the degree
of integration or
segregation of streets
and other spaces within
a neighborhood, town
or city, by studying the
‘axial lines’ and
‘convex spaces’
Adaptedfrom,UrbanDesignToolkit,ThirdEdition,theMinistryfortheEnvironment,Manatü Mö Te Taiao,2006

14. BIOCLIMATISM
What it is What it’s useful for How it’s done
Bioclimatic
Design
Reconfiguration of the
relationship between, climatic
conditions of a specific context,
the site and the build
environment
Defining a bioclimatic
design strategy is useful to
provide visual and thermal
comfort, minimizing
resource and energy use are
central.
In a such design
configuration, the
knowledge and
understanding of climate
(sun, and solar
geometry, air and
temperature, wind and
humidity..), site bio-configurations
(topography, orientation,
soil, water, vegetation,
building and street
morphology…)
Material properties and
passive systems and
design strategies

15. What it is What it’s useful for How it’s done
LCA Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
is a highly detailed method to
evaluate all environmental
impacts of a product during its
complete life cycle
A Life Cycle Assessment
of a product avoids a
“narrow outlook” and
ensures the best
overview of your
product’s supply chain, to
identify the existing
environmental hotspots.
The complete assessment
is not only about CO2, but
rather about all
environmental impacts for
which researchers have
developed methods.
The procedure has been
normalized in the ISO
14040 and ISO 14044
standards and includes
interdependent steps
MFA Material flow analysis (MFA)
is a systematic assessment of
the flows and stocks of
materials within a system
defined in space and time.
Brunner and Rechberger, 2004
• Delineate system of
material flows and stocks
• Reduce system
complexity while
maintaining basis for
decision-making
• Assess relevant flows
and stocks quantitatively,
checking mass balance,
sensitivities, and
uncertainties
• Present system results in
reproducible,
understandable,
transparent fashion
• Use results as a basis for
managing resources, the
environment, and wastes
Eg: The software
STAN (Software for
Substance Flow
Analysis)
ENERGY

16. Why Brussels?
+ 170 000 by 2020
Area : 160 Km2
New constructions,
Renovation
Need of densification
Find new urban form
50% Open space Microclimates
Flexibility in urban fabric

17. A
Inspection
of basics
B
Analysis of
Issue
Context
C
Design
Process
Framework
D
Guideline
and
recommen
dation
Neighborhood District City
Scale analysis
Interrelation: Integrated design strategies Generic Process
Key Issues and recommendations
Investigation of
Methods / Tools
Case studies Framework
Method of work

18. Case study Tour Taxis
Localisation of TourTaxis (adapted from URBIS)
3D view of the TourTaxis project source: Master
Plan TourTaxis, 2009
• Area: 45ha
• Promotion of the social mix, the urban mix, the
connectivity of the site to public transport
• The construction of a public area: the biggest
public park since the 19th century in Brussels-
Capital Region. In total 45% of the total space
of the area will be dedicated to the park (20ha)

19. Summary
Ÿ Ambition:
Improving knowledge about the relationship between
Urban form, energy and bioclimatism in order to develop an IDP
framework for the practitioners
Ÿ First relation between urban form energy and bioclimatism:
Degree of freedom seems to be available in the urban design
Urban Morphology has the potential to halve a city’s energy and
carbon emissions
Ÿ Study of the urban form:
The city has been seems as complex adaptive systems of void and
solid areas

20. Targets
1. Obtain qualitative and quantitative results that characterize the
nature of the relationship between urban open space and energy
issues
2. Show how the morphology of the urban open space (square, street,
park, inside blocks ...) impact the energy consumption of the buildings
surrounding and how full and empty interact
3. Create an IDP framework for decision support in the design or
management of energy efficient urban projects in their entirety

21. Thank you!

22. A
Inspection
of basics
B
Analysis of
Issue
Context
C
Design
Process
Framework
D
Guideline
and
recommen
dation
Neighborhood District City
Scale analysis
Interrelation: Integrated design strategies Generic Process
Key Issues and recommendations
Investigation of
Methods / Tools
Case studies Framework
Method of work