Design approach for the integration of services in buildings

This paper describes a novel methodology to group building services (BSs) into a single trunking system at minimal proximal distances between them. The study focused on solving the geometrical complexity encountered in conventional arrangements of BSs, while taking into account thermophysical and electromagnetic interactions between services together with building regulations. The potential solution for delivery and distribution of BSs in any number of directions is an ‟onion layers„ type of design, using novel mathematical manipulations based on manifolds of spherical and cylindrical geometries joined using Bezier surfaces. Computer Aided Design iterations were undertaken for channelling six BSs into a single unit including water, air, electricity and data. It consists of concentric cylindrical-spherical shells superimposed at few millimetres gaps (channels) for which physical prototypes were produced.