Energy and Buildings 84 (2014) 426–441 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy and Buildings j ourna l ho me pa g e: www.elsevier.com/locate/enbuild Evolutionary energy performance feedback for design: Multidisciplinary design optimization and performance boundaries for design decision support Shih-Hsin Lin, David Jason Gerber * School of Architecture, University of Southern California, 316 Watt Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 3 June 2014 Received in revised form 20 August 2014 Accepted 21 August 2014 Available online 30 August 2014 Keywords: Multidisciplinary design optimization Energy performance feedback Early stage design Design exploration Performance-based design Parametric design Genetic algorithm Multi-objective optimization Design decision support Design domain integration a b s t r a c t In pursuit of including energy performance as feedback for architects’ early stage design decision mak- ing, this research presents the theoretical foundation of a designer oriented multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) framework titled evolutionary energy performance feedback for design (EEPFD). Through a comprehensive literature review and gap analysis EEPFD is developed into an MDO methodol- ogy that provides energy performance as feedback for influencing architects’ decision making more fluidly and earlier than other approaches to date. Secondly, in response to the lack of an MDO best practice EEPFD is investigated and evaluated through two experiments. The first experiment demonstrates the ability to utilize EEPFD provided energy performance as feedback to pursue multiple architectural designs with competing objectives and tradeoffs. The second experiment identifies performance boundaries as a best practice for MDO applications to the early stage architectural design processes. The research synthe- sizes the results into the basis for measuring these performance boundaries as a best practice in the context where architects must gauge multiple design concepts with varying complexity coupled with performance objectives through EEPFD, thereby enhancing the influence of energy performance feed- back on the early stage design process. Finally, future research into the use of performance boundaries for conceptual energy performance design exploration is discussed. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the current field of architecture the issue of sustainable design and building performance, especially with respect to energy per- formance, has become increasingly significant to the overall design process. This growing emphasis is primarily attributed to the fact that buildings account for a majority of all consumed energy, nearly one half (48.7%) in the United States [1] and up to 40% of all energy consumption in the European Union [2]. Research indicates that incorporation of energy performance feedback at the early stage of the design process can potentially increase the energy efficiency over a building design’s entire lifecycle [3–8]. However, multiple obstacles exist inhibiting seamless and timely inclusion of energy performance feedback during this design phase. This leads to the research pursuit of a “designing-in performance” methodology and “best practice” where architects are able to utilize energy perfor- mance as feedback to influence their design exploration and design * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 617 794 7367. E-mail addresses: dgerber@usc.edu, djgerber@post.harvard.edu (D.J. Gerber). decision-making synchronously during the early stages of architec- tural design exploration. Our work is based in part on the simple hypothesis that if the energy performance data, such as first and second cost is available, designers will be influenced to choose and pursue higher performing designs. Despite the acknowledged beneficial impact of considering energy performance early in design [9], obstacles between design and energy simulation domains often prevent the inclusion of energy performance during the early stage design process [10–12]. Multiple efforts have been made to resolve these issues, includ- ing research into improved interoperability, platform integrations, design automation, and multi-objective optimization techniques. Among these efforts, multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO), which combines multi-objective optimization (MOO) algorithms with parametric design, demonstrates a great potential as an ini- tial design exploration methodology that is capable of providing rapid visual and analytical feedback for early stage design decision- making. However, the application of MDO during the early stage of the design process to support designers’ decision making has not been adequately explored. Consequently, whether the provided energy performance feedback from an MDO can actually support http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2014.08.034 0378-7788/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.