Computational Design Sustainability: A Conceptual Framework for Built Environment Research

This paper presents and demonstrates a "Computational Design Sustainability" (CDS) framework, inspired by "Computational Sustainability" (CS), which is a new area in computational research (C. Gomes & Yang, 2011). CS aims to apply techniques from computer science to address sustainability problems affecting a wide range of fields from environmental sciences to social studies. While CS has been broadly embraced in environmental science, the great potential of this concept to address grand challenges and solve complex problems seems to have not been adequately explored in the built environment domain. Therefore, this paper attempts to formally investigate the application of CS in built environment research addressing different scales of design problems with computational design through proposing the new concept of CDS. These approaches are demonstrated and evaluated through a range of projects collectively conducted by the research team. CDS proposes to advance computational deign research by creating a trade-off between pillars of sustainability in an integrated multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach. The presented conceptual framework provides a formal means to critically understand and further advance these approaches in a systematic way suitable for future development and broader application.