From rating tool to design tool: to what extent do sustainability rating systems (SRS) influence today's architecture practice?

© 2012 Dr. Juan Pablo BlancoSustainability Rating Systems (SRS), e.g. LEED or Green Star, have been widely adopted and its scale of implementation continues to rise; they are a factor that cannot be ignored in current architecture practice. Despite that, its adoption tends to be perceived by practitioners as a restriction or checklist exercise which does not positively impact design activity. This study will understand design process as a series of “framing” and “reframing” activities where knowledge is been collected and implemented through design moves. To tests these assumptions the study will analyze the effect of SRS in design activity of real-life projects, examining in particular whether such systems encourage design activity. The following is a list of research questions: 1) How do Sustainability Rating Systems (SRS) manifest themselves in design methodologies? 2) How is knowledge generation manifested in the design process? Protocol analysis based in graphic data is adopted as the research method in this study. In order to collect and interpret data, three case studies has been selected taking in consideration two firm intrinsic characteristics: size and longevity. A small and relatively new practice tends to be considered as an entity more flexible and open to new ideas. On the contrary, large and well-establish practices tend to be illustrated as fixed entities with pre-established methodologies. The context of the study is the Melbourne CBD, where a pool of practices had already worked with the local SRS: Green Star (GS), developed by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA). Following project selection criteria, three cases have been selected: ‘Pixel Building’, ‘Council House 2’, and ‘National Australia Bank, Melbourne. To encode design protocols, three coding schema are utilized: Schön’s design model to isolate framing activities, and the number of design activities associated to Consultant’s input and GS criteria. A linkographic study is employed to structure design communication. The results indicate that, for the cases selected, design activities significantly differ in all three cases. Most notably the methodology allowed to trace, identify and describe two types of design knowledge structures that corroborate that, for the case studies, SRS can be a factor that prevent greater levels of knowledge generation during design processes