Bombyx – Design-integrated Real-time Life Cycle Assessment
The project will teach design-integrated environmental performance optimization of buildings using the self-developed tool Bombyx. This parametric tool is the first of its kind allowing for real-time Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). As such, it will take the application of LCA to the next level – from a current post-design assessment to intuitive environmental optimization during the design process.
The project
Motivation for the project came from the fact that our previous teaching course was not targeting the right student group.
We were teaching how to do LCA in details as if it was environmental engineers who attended the course (some are)
We were also teaching building materials, how to produce them (and what are the environmental consequences as if it was material scientists who attended the course (some are)
We missed the fact that the main group is architect and civil engineers who want to know how to implement LCA guildelines in their design projects.
So really link LCA with building design
Implementation into teaching practice
We implemented in teaching practice by fundamentally modifying teaching logic.
We give basic inputs on LCA in the first courses (3 first weeks), then we start with a concrete project that student need to assess and improve.
And all along this project work, we give specific inputs on questions when they arise.
So we have 40min recorded input lecture on different detailed projects.
And the time in the course is there for discussion with student about their project and the additional complexity we provided during the input lecture
Lessons learned and further impacts
Project goal achieved:
• Easy and straightforward to use. Plug and play.
• Taught through exercise – learning by doing
Additional benefit
• Students applied the tool on projects they had to develop outside this specific course, which increase the interest for them to attend this course as it is useful for other courses.
Potential for improvement
Calculations for very early design phases are still a bit long as it requires to indicate some details that might be unknown in this phase. A bombyx v2 is under development in order to be implemented next year.
The visualization of results could be improved.
Opinions of students
We started in HS2019 and had positive feedback, but the tool and the teaching through lecture on-demand and exercise during the lecture were still to be improved. We implemented that in HS2020. Obviously, due to COVID situation, the idea of having pre-recorded lecture (lecture on demand) and doing exercises during the class with individual feedback on each group came very naturally and fit perfectly the teaching context we were in during COVID. We will continue like that.
A few comments from the student evaluation:
“Having an individual consultancy session for our specific project was very helpful”
“I had many time constraints so I couldn’t keep up with the class at some point. But because the exercise was linked to my Integrated Design Project course I could successfully invest more time to this class here in the later part of the semester and in the end had a very in depth experience with LCA”
Aspects to improve next semester:
We are dealing with two masters, civil engineers and integrated building systems. We based the exercise on the design project of the latter, which on one side is good as it provide a real case study, but this is a problem for civil engineer student who don’t feel useful in the process. We should probably define 2 different exercises for the two student groups and not try to mix them as we did.
This will also allow to focus the exercise in order to be useful for other courses in their curriculum.
Links and downloads
Authors
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Alexander Hollberg
