Energy use and relative CO₂ emissions drive climate change that affects both the environment and human health. Extreme events caused by climate change, such as heat waves, flooding, and droughts are increasingly frequent and dangerous and the quality of life in cities is progressively decreasing. The building sector is among the most energy intensive sectors and mitigation and adaptation strategies are needed to reduce the emissions and impacts of climate change. This article presents a literature review created using the SCOPUS database on 515 articles setup to investigate the role of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in architectural and urban design processes and to understand how KPIs can be used to improve sustainability in the design of buildings and cities. Findings from the literature review highlights the potentiality of KPIs as a tool for managing complexity and for measure performances starting from the early design stages up to the lifetime of buildings and, in general, design. In parallel, the analysis of results showed that KPIs are commonly used to evaluate performance at a very different scale, but the building scale is the most considered. The use of KPIs in architecture, focusing on sustainability, should be implemented more in the future to allow for a better control of architectural performances.

Population growth, urbanization, and climate change have significantly contributed to environmental degradation, posing severe consequences for humans and other species. By integrating ecological objectives with human-centric goals, a path towards a sustainable, multi-species future is possible. Current sustainable design principles have shown positive environmental impacts by addressing human-centric objectives such as enhancing green infrastructure, energy efficiency, thermal comfort, and more. However, the incorporation of multi-species design criteria remains unresolved. This paper proposes a conceptual framework in which human-centric and ecological design objectives are defined and associated through the selection of key performance indicators (KPIs) represented by numerical thresholds. But, while the objective-KPI relationship is an established path in architectural design, the same does not apply for preserving and promoting biodiversity. The proposed conceptual framework identifies, defines, and associates the relevant objective-KPI relationships for all stakeholders and becomes the basis for evaluating the project computationally. Such an approach is currently lacking.

Anthropic activities negatively impact natural and artificial ecosystems, necessitating interdisciplinary mitigation strategies such as multi-species building envelope designs. This paper introduces a computational multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology to support these envelope designs. We also propose a nested set strategy for key performance indicators (KPI) to strategically measure architectural and ecological performances. We integrate the strategy into a proposed hybrid MCDM methodology using computational design tools. The methodology was tested using a generic volume case study described by an architectural and ecological objective with varied priorities. Initial results highlight the computational interoperability of hybrid MCDM, informed by nested KPI set priorities, as support for multi-species building envelope designs.

This paper aims to define a methodological framework and an operational approach for optimising the location, shape, and size of trees (or other NbS) within the surrounding urban morphology to locally reduce the urban heat island (UHI) effect and identify correlations between urban configurations and NbS performance. The goal is to overcome current limitations, which include the lack of a systematic approach to maximising NbS performance in locally mitigating UHI. Based on the model of the urban canyon, the proposed theoretical and computational approach includes the definition of key performance indicators and their calculation to implement a multi-objective optimisation.