Sustainable Design and Software Tools by Multimatrix Criteria

Architecture design has been for long time relying on graphic drawings and handmade calculations. The results of this procedure was surely an arts and craft product, which very often could not be reproduced or even built in an easy way. Lately, according to the new Computer Aided Systems, many problems - arisen from the impossibility of taking under control various factors - have been solved and a new world of representation, design and construction were born. In the CITTAM (a research centre of the University of Naples) a new methodology has been studied and developed by a team of experts in various disciplines. The methodology, applied to any scale of product, from a small component of a window, until a large urban area, takes into account indicators, parameters and performances of a great number of issues, aimed at assessing the level of sustainability of the product, employed in the construction. This Model, by shape of Multicriteria Matrix, is being processed firstly by means of a structure of Excel sheets, and is now been implementing into a Computer Software, which could help the designers ex-ante, on-going and after the design procedure and the building construction, in order to allow them to take decisions regarding the choice of materials, shapes, volumes, location, orientation, etc. of the final product. The paper describes the Model and the potential of the innovative Software for assessing sustainability of products, by showing both the structure of the Matrix and the Information Technology. The results, provided by an example of use for a design procedure, demonstrate the usefulness of the tool. In conclusion this new methodology of design and production, by means of Multicriteria Information Tools can help to give again some arts and craft quality to building and architecture, at the same time allowing guarantee of sustainability.