Peisen Zhao

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1. Estimating the total Construction Cost of the Building Based on Total Floors

The reason why I choose to use this metric is due to the fact that in a construction project, the estimated cost would be the most essential factor to determine if it would be feasible and possible to implement, and its value are closely tied with different parties involved, such as developers, designers, contractors, and even the salary of workers

Therefore, I created two instances of the total Top Height with one as 738 ft and another as 750 ft. This is because I set the floor to floor height to 12 ft in Revit model. By setting the height difference equal to the floor height, it would be effective to give an good estimation as close as the reality.

More specifically, the per square feet construction cost is different based on the total height of the building where below screenshot from Dynamo would be a good illustration:

Two multipliers are added to both the “Value at Lowest level” and “Value at Highest Level” where values of the multipliers are specifically designed to differentiate between different top heights. For example, in terms of the multiplier for the lowest level, it is 0.75 for Top Height equals to 738 feet, and 0.85 for Top Height equals to 750 feet. Similarly, the multiplier for the highest level is designed differently that it is 1.1 for Top Height equals to 738 feet and 1.2 for Top Height equals to 750 feet. These multipliers would be able to add adjustable weights to the construction cost of each floor, eventually impacting the total construction cost to more closely reflect the reality where the taller the height would incur much more cost non-linearly rather than linearly.

Below is the summary table where the Gross Floor Area, Gross Surface Area and Gross Volume are also incorporated for viewing.

As output shows, the total construction cost of top height as 750 is approximately 13% more than that of top height of 738 feet. This suggest that the cost increases non linearly with even one additional floor construction for skyscraper, and it is impacted by factors such as structural reinforcement, elevator systems, wind load accommodations for extreme height. Therefore, even a small increase in height near the top of the skyscraper would still significantly increase the total cost.

2. Estimating the Environmental Metrics

The reason why I choose to use this metric is because paying attention to environmental effects of a project has been increasingly important especially in metropolitans such as Dubai. The environmental impacts of a building both in construction phase and usage phase are necessary to explore and analyze to ensure it is sustainable and long-lasting. Granularly, this metric would be evaluated from 6 segments: the embodied carbon, operational carbon, material mass, carbon intensity, pollution potential index (PPI), and cooling envelop index.

More specifically, below is the Dynamo screenshot to further illustrate how I arrive at the result:

These parameters are specifically tweaked to cater to the local material practices, climate impacts to operational energy, ensuring it is a case-specific environmental analysis.

• The embodied carbon is calculated by using GFA * 46.5 [kgCO2e/ft2] since Dubai is concrete-heavy
• The operational carbon is calculated by using GSA * 8.5 [kgCO2e/ft2] since Dubai requires higher cooling loads
• The material mass is calculated by using GV * 0.075 to estimated the total material use based on enclosed volume in tons
• The carbon intensity per volume is calculated by dividing Embodied Carbon by GV to understand how much CO2 is embodied per volume of building
• The pollution potential index is a weighted index for comparing design of different total floor heights: (1.0 * GFA) + (1.2 * GSA) + (0.25 * GV)
• The cooling envelop index is calculated by dividing GSA by GFA to indicate surface exposure per usable area

Below is the summary table where the Gross Floor Area, Gross Surface Area and Gross Volume are also incorporated for viewing.

Firstly, for embodied and operation carbon aspect, both increase gradually where embodied carbon increase 3.1% from 730 feet to 750 feet, while operational carbon increases more slowly as 2.35%.

Secondly, for carbon intensity per volume aspect, it varies slightly and steadily, indicating a stable material performance and consistent use of construction methods.

Thirdly, the cooling envelop index drops from 0.2489 to 0.2470, where lower value indicates more compact building form where less surface exposed per floor area. A cooling envelop index near 0.247 is very good for skyscrapers where a typical values less than 0.25 would reflect tight, well-proportioned forms.

Fourthly, the pollution potential index steadily increases from 10.4M to 10.69M, with a strong correlation with material mass and embodied carbon. The steady and proportional increase suggests the design scales efficiently without introducing major environmental penalties for small height increments. Also, there are no abrupt spikes either, which indicates there are no inefficient structural thresholds.

Fifthly, the material mass grows nearly linearly, indicating the structure is scaled rationally without abrupt increase in material usage.