Topological characteristics of ecological building design complexity

Ecological building design is founded on holistic and aspiration paradigms that may be interpreted, at least in part, by the theory of dynamic systems and complexity. This complexity in ecological building design is derived from taking environmental issues, socio-economics, resources and energy consumption into consideration, in addition to other technical design contexts. Using complexity theories, this article attempts to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the nature of ecological building design complexity. It introduces new methodology to analyse the complex interaction among eco-design fitness measures. Based on data from a survey, a distance matrix is constructed to map out the relationship between 115 ecological design fitness measures. Social network software is used to visualize the interaction among the design fitness measures and extract key influential eco-fitness clusters. The results demonstrate that social network techniques are useful in quantifying the relationship among eco-design fitness measures.