Optimised design of energy efficient building façades via Evolutionary Neural Networks

Buildings are required to be more and more energy efficient, in order to comply with restrictive requirements of building regulations and energy certifications. Optimisation algorithms have shown to be effective in identifying good solutions for the design of efficient building services. In this article Evolutionary Neural Network Design (ENN-Design) has been adopted to drive the design of a typical façade module for an office building. This application is significant, since façades play a major role in the definition of the energy performance of buildings. Both single-objective and multi-objective optimisations have been carried out. The aim of the article is to introduce an innovative approach for improving the performance of building envelopes by means of a reasonable amount of calculation time.

► Optimisation algorithms give the opportunity to design energy efficient buildings.
► The façade of an office building has been optimised via an evolutionary algorithm.
► Single and multi-objective optimisations have been run.
► An innovative approach – Evolutionary Neural Network Design – has been developed.
► The algorithm has proved to be very effective in identifying a set of good solutions.