A BUILDING ENERGY PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PROGRAM (EnAd) FOR ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN PROCESS

Energy performance in buildings has become one of the most broadly debated subjects in contemporary architecture.Although technological advances in computational tools, make possible the analysis of a building energy performance before construction starts; most of these performance evaluation tools, developed by different countries based on different building codes and standards, requiring complex solid models and high technical knowledge in the field, can only be used during the post design phases.However, it is evident that any design decision in any phase of the design process directly affects the energy performance of a building.Therefore the use of such evaluation tools from the very beginning of the design process has an outmost importance.In this context, a building energy performance evaluation program, entitled as Energy Performance Advisor (EnAd), is developed for evaluating the energy performance of buildings considering not only the legal framework of Turkey, but also the building design process.The program does not require advanced expertise, and is intended to be usable in any phase of the design process.EnAd, using the monthly calculation method of TS EN ISO 13790, is developed based on the European Union Directive on Energy Performance in Buildings (EPBD) and the current Turkish legislation on the subject.The validity, reliability, precision and usability of EnAd as a design-support tool has been proved through the usability and convergence tests conducted.