Competences Beyond Engineering: A Mental Model of Conceptual Building Design (ST-16-C045)

New strong demands for a more sustainable built environment led to a more complex building design process. The most important decisions in building design are made in the very early conceptual phase. This happens often when there are no engineers involved yet and so the architect has to make all the decisions on his own. Especially in the conceptual design phase the different expertise of engineers could be used more effectively by architects to reach for new more sustainable solutions. To support diverse multidisciplinary building design teams a supportive design method was developed in cooperation with the Dutch professional organizations of architects and consulting engineers.  It helps architects and engineers with their new role in the conceptual design phase as it enables to structure each perspective on the design task as well as to structure the available domain knowledge by using morphological charts and morphological overviews. After testing the method in workshops as part of a training program in industry, the design method was transferred and applied at the department of architecture for master students for their multidisciplinary Master project Integral Design.  In the last 10 years Master Projects Integral design were held and there was a continuous development to optimize the cooperation between architects and engineers. The research showed that it is possible to engage engineers and let other disciplines learn from them within the conceptual building design phase, which makes it easier to achieve energy efficient and environmental friendly buildings such as nearly Zero Energy Buildings.  Also the approach can be used to analyse the design process and to focus on the communication within the design team as well as use it to represent a kind of mental map of the design team. This helps engineers to interfere with the conceptual design process and add additional knowledge and experience. In this way competences beyond engineering can be added to improve the outcome of the design process.