Computational Modelling and

This paper addresses today’s challenges in creating a building design. It focuses on the criteria of sustainable design and how it can be integrated into the conceptual design stages of office and administrative buildings. The conceptual design stages are of extraordinarily high importance because they have a profound impact on the later costs and performance of the resulting building. A careful investigation of the different design options is accordingly required. As the combination of the diverse design options usually results in a very large design space which can hardly be explored manually, designers can obtain considerable assistance from computer tools that are able to perform an automated design space exploration (ADSE). If they are to be of use, however, such tools need to be intuitive, helping the designers in the decision-making process without impeding creativity. This paper contributes towards the development of such tools by investigating the boundary conditions in place. To illustrate the concept, the paper presents a prototypical software tool which assists building designers in the creation of load-bearing steel and steel composite structures for a roughly defined building layout