Environmental design as a routine

A buildingʹs internal environment, which is the physical climate and emotive character of the spaces within that building, is derived from the design of the building as an entirety. Previously published papers have shown how the design of entire buildings may be structured in a generic manner as a preliminary to the development of interactive computer aided design (CAD) programs. This paper—which is not a research report but a proposal as to how knowledge derived from research and experience might be incorporated in such structures, the better to influence design—is concerned with the design of buildingsʹ environments. The general approach is to ‘decompose’ a buildingʹs overall design into smaller, more manageable sub-tasks within the ‘design subsystems’ of siting, planning, construction and services, with controls exerted by project management and building economic constraints. Sub-tasks are broken further into individual design decisions, most of which have some influence 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 are parts, the inter-relations of the thermal, visual and aural environmental components. Such guides may be developed to incorporate understanding derived from building research and analyses of the performance of completed buildings in use. They act as aids to traditional design decision-making. They also constitute a basis for formulation of ‘design rules’ from which computer aided design of environments may be developed through the medium of expert systems.