Extending buildings’ life cycle: Sustainability early design support tool

Sustainability concerns are in all sectors’ agendas, and building industry is not an exception. Sustainable design should both, reduce the environmental impact caused by buildings throughout their life cycle and positively contribute to people’s well-being by addressing and being adaptable to their needs. There is the need for an early design support tool to aid implementing sustainability concepts since the project beginning toward sustainable built environment. Regardless of the existing number of building sustainability assessment tools, these were not developed to be applied at early design, requiring great data detail, inexistent at these stages. Most of the tools are directed to evaluate the performance of chosen solutions rather than aiding the decisionmaking process. This paper presents a new approach for an early design support tool for residential building. The tool is aimed to aid designers evaluate and compare different design alternatives, allowing them to make an informed decision based on the performance of the solutions, across the three cornerstones of sustainability. Additionally, the tool was thought to increase awareness across all stakeholders, promoting and encouraging the adoption of more efficient solutions. The structure of the tool and its main framework are depicted in this paper. To identify the criteria to include in the tool it was necessary to analyse the existing sustainability assessment standards and tools as well as the project teams’ actions. The level of detail of the indicators was also analysed as at early design not all aspects are relevant or capable of being addressed. This analysis led to the nineteen indicators, spread in seven categories. Using this tool, it is expected that buildings can easily be adapted to new necessities, extending their life cycle while improving life quality, and consequently reducing their environmental impact