The role of early design decisions on sustainability of mid-rise office buildings from a comparative LCA perspective

This study compares the environmental impacts of four professionally-designed archetypes building with different combinations of foundation, structure, and envelopes (FSE) assemblies. In addition, detailed operational energy modeling using the EnergyPlus framework is performed. The result shows that early decisions regarding structural and foundation systems significantly affect the production and construction phases, whereas the choice of envelope system is the primary driver of the operational phase. furthermore, the operational phase dominates the life-cycle of the archetypes and therefore, early decisions associated with the operational phase, such as envelope system and expected service life, should be prioritized.