Abstract
Early architectural decisions have an enormous impact on the long-term performance of buildings. Evaluating architectural designs remains a subjective and biased process that varies from one person to another. Based on three questionnaires with 37 expert architects, seven Architectural Design Variables (ADVs) were identified, with a total of 40 design options that suit residential buildings. The experts defined the degree by which each ADV decision positively or negatively affect multiple life-cycle performance criteria: space functionality; construction time and cost; operational performance; and aesthetics. Based on that, this paper presents a novel Architectural Design Decision Support System (AD-DSS) to automatically evaluate and rank any combination of early design, using the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method. The AD-DSS can automatically evaluate any combination of architectural design in terms of overall performance or a specific aspect without subjective inputs. Besides, a simple-user program developed to facilitate multiple system functions. A case study of a residential building with five different design alternatives demonstrated the powerful ability of the AD-DSS to provide early decision advice in a systematic and informed way to project stakeholders.