A Review of Performance-Oriented Architectural Design and Optimization in the Context of Sustainability: Dividends and Challenges

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is quite well structured and covers a topic of interest and relevance.

I think some corrections should be made and answer the following questions to improve the quality of it.

You must indicate at least two additional keywords, such as sustainable construction and sustainable architecture. In relation to what it says in lines 43 and 44. Don't you think students of architecture and engineering should be considered and an update of the curricula?

        What do you think of teaching architectural students the use of energy           simulation programs in the design phases of buildings?

In section 1.1 you do not think that importance can also be attached to urban planning, since good urban design can lead to energy savings as passive energy strategies. Lines 135-137 describe studies that have been made with dynamic building simulations to obtain a minimum energy demand. I believe that today there is no awareness in many architects of the importance of dynamic building simulations. You can explain to us at this point what could be done about it. In line 138. In section 2. Performance-oriented design and optimization, some reference should be made to the optimization of air renewal systems, since it is known that a lot of energy is lost due to infiltration and ventilation as well as references to efficient designs with good indoor air quality. In lines 139-142 I think mention should also be made of the colour of the building envelope. In section 2.1 references can be added from recent research where importance is given to the solar reflectance of the building envelope. Lines 359-366 describe the dialogue that must exist in the design phases of an architectural project. I think you should describe how you think the architect can be encouraged to feel part of the process of energy simulations of buildings and not think it is only the engineers' job. In line 665, in section 4.2 you can write a small paragraph about the importance of the urban context in the efficient design of buildings. Lines 666-675 describe the importance of new algorithms that are being developed to achieve more efficient buildings, but it would be good to highlight the habit of the occupants. If both are considered we can reduce not only the demand but also the energy consumption. I believe that a bibliographical investigation of recent research should be made, where the habit of the occupants is taken into consideration and also those investigations where the habit of the occupants is taken into consideration for the development of the algorithms, Paragraph 717-731 mentions the importance of the architects in the design phases and addresses the issue that most performance interpretation interfaces are not architect friendly. However, there are researchers working on these lines, to make the data outputs of simulation programs more friendly by means of more didactic graphics. It can explain how the process of making architects aware of integrating energy simulation processes into the design phases can be accelerated. In section 4.4, it could add research carried out with artificial intelligence on the monitoring of buildings to achieve efficient buildings in the process of retrofitting buildings. In addition to incorporating the importance of building monitoring not only to control energy demand but also energy consumption. In the conclusions, lines 799-812 should provide solutions to the gap between architects and the use of building energy simulation software in the building design phase. Before the paragraph from line 813-818, importance should be given to the habits of the occupants in the design of efficient buildings. In the conclusions give any suggestion or recommendation for universities or the curricula of architects and engineers.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the design and optimization of building envelopes, form and shading systems is nowadays very discussed by scientific community, for this reason the paper can be considered of interest for the Journal.

Some studies on the subject could be added in the paper (and in the References), for example: a) DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2017.07.412 (Energy Procedia,2017); b) DOI:  https://doi.org/10.7480/jfde.2018.3.2470 (J. Facade Des. Eng. 2018); c) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.02.017 (Energy , 2018); d) DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/en13010146 (Energies 2020)

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, my comments and suggestions for the manuscript are listed below:

- There are two "Hypothesis and purposes of the work" subchapters, 1.2 and 1.3 have the same title. Change them, and since there is more than one hypothesis, use plural hypotheses. 

- I miss a chapter about the methodology of the literature review. Where you searched for articles (WoS?), did you considered only journal papers or conference proceedings as well, when was the research conducted (or until which date) how the articles were selected, what exact keywords or combinations did you used during the research, how many papers did you found with those keywords, how you narrowed down the list of papers to 99, etc. I advise adding a subchapter into your introduction about methodology. Besides that, you may consider detailing why did you select the presented papers in chapter 2 as well. You only considered papers that dealing with whole building simulations where the envelope, form or shading was optimized? There are many more papers available in WoS/Scopus database where building facades or components are optimized (e.g masonry walls, lightweight walls, etc), therefore you needed to narrow down this topic, and describe it. You also should describe the database you made from the articles you gathered. 

- NSGA-II abbreviated from "non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm" instead of ranking.

- Table 1, 2 and 3 are way too small. You need to rearrange it to make it more visible. You may delete some redundant information or use abbreviations. 

- Please rearrange figures to avoid putting them into the middle of sentences, e.g. Figure 3.

- Please caption your figures according to the template of the journal (https://www.mdpi.com/files/word-templates/sustainability-template.dot), e.g. add a-d letters for Figure 5 to distinguish the content. 

- You should concretize your conclusions, and include the main findings of the paper in that chapter. If someone only reads the conclusion of the paper, he just gets subtle hints what is your findings or what is inside your paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, I appreciate that you revised the manuscript including the given advice. 

I only have some comments mainly on editing:

1) In my opinion, dividends and challenges gave not so much as keywords, it is also included in the title of the article. I may advise adding building form, shading system, building envelope or energy performance to the keywords instead. 

2) ACE industry, as called several times in the paper, is rather usually called as AEC industry (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction). Add at least a note on this into the paper.

3) Figure 1 could be larger, increase its size to fit from side to side. There is room in the paper for this enlargement. This suggestion should be considered for all other figures, especially Figure 3 and 4.

4) Page numbering contains errors starting from table 1 through the entire manuscript, e.g. it starts from page 1 after each table. Correct it.

5) Due to the tables does not fit into a single page, please include captions on each page and write "Table X. cont." as a caption, as well as include the header of the continued table on all of the pages. A good example of this can be found in this article published in Sustainability very recently, see Table 5 or Table 6: https://doi.org/10.3390/su12010440

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx