A built form is embeded in a set of environmental fields such as air temperature, air velocity, sound and light. The form's effect upon the environment is governed by a set of physical laws, such as those of thermal conduction, radiative transfer, air flow, sound and light transmission. Thus, for any form it is, in principle, possible to relate the state of the environment inside the form to the state of the environment outside. Since the form/environment relationship is quantitative, this leads to the possibility of prescribing the properties of the form which will lead to a required state of the environment inside from knowledge of the state of the environment outside. A required state of the environment can be specified on the basis of our knowledge of the response of humans to their environment. In their simplest form, human comfort and/or performance requirements are expressed in terms of a value or a range of values of an environmental field. This leads to a model for generating the required properties of the form from the specifications of human comfort and/or performance requirements and the description of the existing environment. In this study, theoretical and methodological aspects which underlie the establishment of a quantitative form/satisfaction relationship are developed together with methods for representing the relationship so that it is possible to generate the properties of the form from the specification of the required level of satisfaction in a particular environment. A measure of the form's functional performance is also developed. This indicates the performance of the form in terms of the probability of achieving a specified level of satisfaction. The measure can, in principle, be used either to predict the performance of the form during the design process without producing detailed designs, or to generate a range of forms based upon a particular model. Being expressed in dimensionless probablistic terms, the measure can also be used to investigate the implications of the interaction amongst various requirements for the form and vice versa. With the help of simple models of the form the possibility of applying the generative approach to aspects of the form's acoustical, luminous and thermal performance is investigated in order to illustrate the general nature of the form/performance relationship in each case. The extension of the generative approach to other aspects of the form's performance is discussed in order to suggest an overall approach to design. The form/ performance approach is proposed as a unifying research paradigm in architecture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:652315 |
| Date | January 1978 |
| Creators | Helmy, S. A. |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17510 |
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