A method for evaluating the environmental life cycle potential of building geometry

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is becoming more and more important for building sustainability evaluation. However, in architectural practice LCA is not carried out in early design stages although the consideration of the environmental life cycle performance (LCP) is essential for creating sustainable buildings and early design stages offer the highest potential for optimization. The main focus in these design stages lies on the definition of the building geometry. However, conducting an LCA only based on building geometry is impossible due to missing information about materials and HVAC systems. Therefore, in this paper we propose a method for assessing the potential LCP (PLCP) that a building geometry offers. PLCP describes the probability of a specific building geometry to achieve a certain LCP in later design stages. This measure can serve to optimize designs according to life cycle aspects. The application of the method is exemplified for the evaluation of six geometric variants of a residential building. The results indicate that PLCP is a valuable measure for decision- making in the architectural design process.