ABSTRACT
Architects are facing accumulated environmental, societal, climatic and resourcing challenges. In response, regulations and standards are being tightened in support of better design and buildings. They set out how project validation, alongside interdisciplinary collaboration and sharing, are essential in creating sustainable architecture and remaining societally relevant. By developing new design practices to respond to societal and environmental challenges, architects can evidence their own value in making good architecture synonymous with buildings that work and that support people’s health and wellbeing. Over the last 10 years the building industry has begun to engage with validation tools and Building Information Modelling has provided a set of tools that open the potential of some validation at design stage. However, architects largely ceded control to specialists, leaving the ‘analysis’ buttons to other consultants, despite it often taking very little additional time to undertake.
