Sustainable urban landscapes: a computation framework for enhancing sustainability in early-stage design
Abstract
Purpose
This study uses computer-aided design to improve the ecological and environmental sustainability of early-stage landscape designs. Urban expansion on open land and natural habitats has led to a decline in biodiversity and increased climate change impacts, affecting urban inhabitants' quality of life and well-being. While sustainability indicators have been employed to assess the performance of buildings and neighbourhoods, landscape designs' ecological and environmental sustainability has received comparatively less attention, particularly in early-design stages where applying sustainability approaches is impactful.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose a computation framework for evaluating key landscape sustainability indicators and providing real-time feedback to designers. The method integrates spatial indicators with widely recognized sustainability rating system credits. A specialized tool was developed for measuring biomass optimization, precipitation management and urban heat mitigation, and a proof-of-concept experiment tested the tool's effectiveness on three Mediterranean neighbourhood-level designs.
Findings
The results show a clear connection between the applied design strategy to the indicator behaviour. This connection enhances the ability to establish sustainability benchmarks for different types of landscape developments using parametric design.
Practical implications
The study allows non-expert designers to measure and embed landscape sustainability early in the design stages, thus lowering the entry level for incorporating biodiversity enhancement and climate mitigation approaches.
Originality/value
This study expands the parametric vocabulary for measuring landscape sustainability by introducing spatial ecosystem services and architectural sustainability indicators on a unified platform, enabling the integration of critical climate and biodiversity-loss solutions earlier in the development process.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The benchmark measurement was conducted on original designer plans, courtesy of Nachalat HaClal Landscape Design Studio. Special thanks go to Tali Wexler and Tali Dinur for sharing their insights and experience. The authors would like to thank the following design professionals for generously providing case study access: Lerman Architects, Lavi Natif, Engineering and Consultants Ltd., Arim Urban Development Ltd., iStern Project Management, Shikun and Binui, Moshe Zur Architects and Town Planners Ltd. The authors thank Shoshanna Saxe for her insights and comments on the manuscript.
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Citation
Yoffe, H., Raanan, N., Fried, S., Plaut, P. and Grobman, Y.J. (2023), "Sustainable urban landscapes: a computation framework for enhancing sustainability in early-stage design", Archnet-IJAR, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH-06-2023-0152
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited