Teaching BPS to architects: A closer look at the building performance simulation ‘consumer’ and ‘performer’ training paradigms

This contribution builds upon a previous study, in which three university-level BPS training paradigms were identified. Using a critical literature review, we focus on two of these; training the ‘consumer’ and ‘performer’ architect, exploring similarities and differences between teaching approaches of these two paradigms. Divergences are found in the location of BPS teaching content within the wider scope of architectural program delivery. The ‘consumer’ paradigm is generally followed in undergraduate architectural education, tends to be taught as an elective module and is almost always linked to a design studio component. The ‘performer’ paradigm is linked to both undergraduate and postgraduate architectural education, is mostly affixed to stand-alone core technical modules and is sometimes attached to the design studio. Similar BPS performance domains are taught across both paradigms, but the rationale underlying BPS tool selection differs. Visualization capabilities and ease-of-learning tend to be the criteria used to justify selection of BPS tools used in articles describing the ‘performer’ paradigm. On the other hand, assignment of BPS tasks to an ‘expert’ under the ‘consumer’ paradigm allows for software with more complex analytical functions to be selected. To conclude, the findings demonstrate how moving beyond descriptions of individualized teaching experimentations in BPS research, toward cross-paradigmatic studies of BPS education, may contribute to the construction of a much-needed foundation to support BPS teaching in the future.