A compactness measure of sustainable building forms

Area of Science:

• Sustainable Architecture
• Building Science
• Environmental Engineering

Background:

• Urbanization and population growth drive increased building construction.
• Buildings are major contributors to energy consumption, emissions, and resource depletion.
• The building envelope significantly impacts energy demand and carbon footprint.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between building form (surface area to indoor space ratio) and sustainability.
• To identify the optimal building form for environmental efficiency.
• To develop a practical, scale-independent metric for assessing building form optimality.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of the geometric relationship between surface area and enclosed volume.
• Development of a novel, scale-independent metric for building form compactness.
• Demonstration of the metric's application in early architectural design stages.

Main Results:

• The study identifies optimal building forms that minimize surface area relative to internal volume.
• A new metric quantifies the deviation of building forms from this optimal state.
• The metric provides a practical tool for designers to evaluate and improve building form efficiency.

Conclusions:

• Optimized building forms are crucial for reducing the environmental impact of the built environment.
• The developed metric offers a valuable tool for sustainable architectural design, guiding choices towards greater efficiency.
• This research provides a theoretical and practical basis for creating more sustainable buildings and supports global environmental efforts.