An LCA Study of Various Office Building Shapes Focusing on Operational Energy: A Case of Hamburg

The design and configuration of buildings can play a major role in influencing the environmental impacts of the built environment. This paper explores the relation of building shape and it’s environmental impacts by employing a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. The primary objective is to contribute to the ongoing discourse on sustainable construction practices by exploring alternatives in office building shapes and heights. The initial focus of our study centers on a set of plan shapes based on different combinations of a 12 × 14 square meter modular unit. This set introduces variations with and without courtyards, coupled with three distinct heights of 3, 6, and 12 m (1, 2, and 4 stories). Expanding our exploration, we introduce a second set of standard geometric shapes, namely square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, and circle. We assess the annual energy demand of buildings with these plan shapes and conduct an LCA analysis focused on the operational energy use stage in the eLCA tool to quantify their environmental implications, focusing on global warming potential (GWP) and primary energy non-renewable total (PENRT) indicators. Through calculations and comparisons of the LCA results, this paper provides insights into the environmental trade-offs and benefits associated with different building plan shapes and heights.