Building Performance Analysis

2Building Performance in Context

The previous chapter defined building performance as a concept that captures how well a building performs its tasks and functions, how well the construction process delivers buildings or the success of a building as presentation or entertainment. It also mapped some of the complexity around building performance. This complexity is often underestimated, both from outside the building discipline and from within. Yet this is a key reason why concepts and approaches from other disciplines such as engineering and computing do not fit seamlessly into the domain of building performance analysis, leading to a waste of efforts as deplored by Clarke and Hensen (2015). This chapter reviews this context in more depth, thus providing a basis for the deeper exploration of building performance that will follow in the remainder of the book.

A first issue to consider is the complexity of the building life cycle. Buildings are known for their longevity; most buildings have a life expectancy of around 80–100 years. However, the service life of building systems and components of buildings has a wide range; roughly decoration lasts 5–7 years, building services 10–15 years, the building envelope around 25 years and the structure at least 50–75 years, whereas the building site is timeless (Blyth and Worthington, 2010: 49). Looking at specific systems there often is detailed research on service life; for instance Vieira et al. (2015) report around 20 years for rendered ...