PROCESS - Workflow for 'Program to Massinig.gh' and 'Massing to Energy Model.gh'

The greatest opportunities to influence the performance of a building occur during early stages of planning and design. At the start, it is critical to establish a building program that is the right size -- or even smaller. Effort put toward an efficient program will result in simply building less building. From a climate perspective, not building anything at all would be the best option -- thereby avoiding all negative effects. Next, building placement, orientation and massing dictate the passive strategies available to the for mitigating environmental impact and reducing energy consumption. The interior organization of spaces will also significantly influence energy consumption.
These critical decisions are typically made by architects. While architects have an intuition about designing for a given climate, they likely do not have the deep expertise consulting engineers provide. Without input from those experts, critical design decisions are made without those explicit considerations.
The tools presented in the video were developed to enable architectural designers to analyze the building program and massing models so performance trade-offs are understood while making critical decisions early in the design process. The files easily pair with design exploration and optimization algorithms.
In no small part, the file here developed from work at LMN Architects and LMN Tech Studio. They first made available a tool for generating massing from a program spreadsheet. They have gone on to further develop that tool for Rhino/Grasshopper, and now as a Revit add-in!
Definitely check all that out by following the links below.
http://lmnarchitects.com/tech-studio/...
http://lmnarchitects.com/tech-studio/...
http://lmnarchitects.com/tech-studio/...

00:06 Program to Massing
02:18 Massing to Energy Model