The social component of building performance simulation: understanding architects

Building performance simulations (BPS) have a significant potential in informing architects’ design decisions. However, architects seldom consider BPS as an integral element of their design processes. This paper reports on a combined qualitative-quantitative methodology aimed at exploring socio-cultural; non-technical barriers discouraging BPS integration; from UK architects’ perspectives. A storyline of phenomena consisting of three levels; architects’ professional identities, attitudes towards BPS and collaboration with BPS specialists, is deduced using a grounded theory-inspired coding procedure. These are validated by way of descriptive statistics and frequencies from a quantitative follow-up. The paper concludes that long-term solutions, addressing differences in professional paradigms, are required rather than rapid response software-level and/or interface improvements