How Building Analysis Software Promoted Educated Design Decisions for the International Studies Building at Indiana University

Over the course of designing the International Studies Building on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, the project’s design team recognized the need for a collaborative design process through which various design decisions could be made as a result of better understanding of the project’s building science and anticipated performance characteristics. Due to monetary constraints and the time consuming and expensive process of carrying out numerous, robust whole-building simulations at several stages throughout the design process, the team decided to leverage several of the numerous accessible software platforms quickly coming to market as a result of the building design and construction industry’s focus on high performance buildings and interdisciplinary design collaboration in order to make design decisions that would positively impact the performance of the project.