Building performance simulation for sensemaking in architectural pedagogy

During sensemaking one constructs meaning from one’s chaotic surrounding information; cues are extracted and attended to such that action is possible. Within architecture, making sense of quantitative information (e.g. carbon emissions) can facilitate climate responsiveness from early stages of building design. This paper posits that building performance simulation (BPS) can be a tool to nurture so-called ‘spatial-data sensemaking’ within architectural training; the pedagogy must manage uncertainty so students can make sense of performance data during design. This teaching method was used in an undergraduate architecture class. Students used BPS to design buildings, using visual audits to build trust in the results about performance; precision was downplayed in favor of actionable information. A qualitative analysis of these architectural students’ reflections (n = 104) is presented to shed light on how they construct understandings of BPS. Results suggest that students deepened their understanding of building–energy relationships, and refined their intuition, especially about interrelationships and trade-offs. They understood BPS to be a tool providing useful information, especially the visual, through experimentation to support design decision-making and argumentation, and ultimately for effecting change in architectural practice.