Teaching Building Performance Evaluation for Sustainable Buildings: Chances and Challenges

With its consideration of the entire building life cycle, the Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) process model constituted a challenge for planners in the building sector when it was introduced in the 1990s: Traditionally, the building delivery process has been understood as a linear course of activities that ends with the opening of the building. At that time, with the new understanding of the building life as a cyclic sequence of phases – including occupancy – and internal review loops, the establishment of performance criteria and their evaluation from a human-centric perspective became crucial. This basic idea of the BPE process model has been verified with the emergence of similar concepts in the building industries, such as certification systems for sustainable buildings (like LEED in the U.S. or DGNB, BNB and QNG in Germany). Thus, universities connected to the building sector have to take these changes and developments into consideration and adapt their existing degree programs – or even develop new ones! But what is the main content and who are the addressees for BPE? Some of the unresolved challenges and questions are: Which are the pivotal processes, phases, and review loops to focus on in the context of BPE? What are the relevant topics, methodologies, and instruments to be taught? Does BPE fit into programs for designers, construction project managers, or facility managers? Should BPE become part of other transdisciplinary programs for new specialists to appear yet in the building sector? How can the collaboration with building users be strengthened throughout the BPE process in order to meet environmental, economic, and social challenges in general and to optimize user satisfaction in particular? The presentation will discuss these issues based on the author's professional background as an architect, his teaching experience, and his research activities in the area of BPE.