ENVIRONMENTAL-DESIGN AS A ROUTINE

A building's internal environment, which is the physical climate and e motive character of the spaces within that building, is derived from t he design of the building as an entirety. Previously published papers have shown how the design of entire buildings may be structured in a g eneric manner as a preliminary to the development of interactive compu ter aided design (CAD) programs. This paper-which is nor a research re port but a proposal as to how knowledge derived from research and expe rience might be incorporated in such structures, the better to influen ce design-is concerned with the design of buildings' environments. The general approach is to 'decompose' a building's overall design into s maller, move manageable sub-tasks within the 'design subsystems' of si ting, planning, construction and services, with controls exerted by pr oject management and building economic constraints. Sub-tasks are brok en further into individual design decisions, most of which have some i nfluence upon design of the environment. The process is illustrated by excerpts from a procedural design guide for general use which shows, besides the inter-relations of environments with the entire buildings of which they ale parts, the inter-relations of the thermal, visual an d aural environmental components. Such guides may be developed to inco rporate understanding derived from building research and analyses of t he performance of completed buildings in use. They act as aids to trad itional design decision-making. They also constitute a basis for formu lation of 'design rules' from which computer aided design of environme nts may be developed through the medium of expert systems.