Evaluating the contribution of green building criteria in evaluation of design courses in architecture undergraduate course using Shannon entropy

Buildings have a wide range of impacts on the environment in their life cycle. The negative effects of buildings, such as waste generation and using about 40% of energy resources, have led to take new approaches which One of them is the concept of green building in architecture. Currently, the construction industry in Iran accounts for one third of the country's energy consumption. Therefore, considering the principles of green building design and construction can play an important role in solving energy and reducing environmental problems. Although university education is one of the opportunities to guide and motivate architecture students to apply the principles of green architectural design, currently this issue has received less attention in undergraduate architecture education in Iran. Research question: The main question of this article is seeking to find out the importance of green building criteria in evaluation of design courses in architecture undergraduate course from the perspective of professors.

Therefore, this article aims to investigate the contribution of green building criteria in evaluation of design courses in architecture undergraduate course in Iran from the perspective of professors. Furthermore, this article seeks to determine the best design courses, which are most suitable for teaching green building criteria. Another goal of this article is finding the most effective obstecles in teaching green building criteria in universities of Iran. The mothod of the present study was conducted using descriptive research and statistical analysis. In the first step, the criteria and indicators in LEED and BREEAM systems are extracted as a criterion for measuring green buildings. In the second step, the importance of each criteria in the evaluation of student projects have been conducted using a questionnaire, from professors’ points of view in architecture design courses in different Iranian universities. The proposed method for teaching green architecture standards in design courses in the undergraduate course of architecture and limitations of teaching green architecture in Iranian university were collected. In the third step, the data were analysed using Shannon entropy method.

The findings of the analysis show that the priority of the criteria based on the average weight of the category is as follows one) water efficiency, two) site, three) transportation, four) energy and materials and resources with equal points in the fourth rank, and five) indoor air quality The results of this study show that assigning one of the architectural projects, especially the final design to teaching the principles of green building can be a good way to increase students' awareness of this issue. However, insufficient attention to green architecture in the curriculum and courses of undergraduate design is the most important obstacle to green architecture education and it is necessary to reconsider it revising the course curriculum. In this article, the hierarchy of criteria and indicators is extracted based on the current situation of architecture education in Iran which is not necessarily in line with the real needs of the country. Therefore, it is suggested that in future research, contribution of criteria and indicators of green buildings should be considered based on the real needs of the country to move towards achieving sustainable development goals.