Abstract
Proceedings from the International High Performance Buildings Conference 2010. In spite of the progress in the development of methods and tools to support sustainable building design, there is still a lack of a formal method to bridge the “no man’s land†gap between the traditional building engineering disciplines, and between these and the architecture, to achieve the level of building integration required for sustainability. The framework described in this paper is an attempt to develop such a method. The framework, grounded on building science, facilitates a comprehensive assessment of the life-cycle performance of buildings and building systems, by enabling multiple function-performance factors of a building to be addressed iteratively. Quantitative methods and test protocols can be incorporated into the framework for assessing the long-term viability of proposed solutions. The organization of the underlying principles of building life-cycle performance described in this paper will hopefully conduct to a more integrated treatment of buildings in research, education, and practice.,Peer reviewed,Conference proceeding,Published.