The parametric design applied to the built environment is critical to creating sustainable and resilient spaces. However, this research field involves a vast and complex amount of disconnected information. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse research trends in applying parametric design to optimise sustainability and environmental ergonomics parameters in built environments. The following specific objectives are identified to meet this objective: (i) a quantitative analysis based on a systematic literature review; (ii) a qualitative review based on a performance analysis and scientific mapping; and (iii) a comparative analysis of case studies applying parametric language for the optimisation of sustainability and environmental ergonomics parameters. The 1045 research records covering 1974 to 2021 illustrate a field in development that evolves from early digital advances to climate change adaptations, the circular economy and resilience. It highlights the importance of applying bioclimatic techniques in the built environment, identifying the most optimised measures and encouraging the creation of guidelines to serve as a protocol for future studies, contributing to the existing body of knowledge by highlighting trends, establishing research themes, outlining research networks and suggesting areas for further studies.

In this paper, we present BH-ShaDe, a new software tool to assist architecture students learning the ill-structured domain/task of housing design. The software tool provides students with automatic or interactively generated floor plan schemas for basic houses. The students can then use the generated schemas as initial seeds to develop complete residential projects. The main goal of our research was to obtain evidence about whether or not such schemas can be useful to architecture students. A first prototype of the tool was evaluated with 78 students, with positive results. However, the students seemed to demand increased user participation, so they could contribute to generating better quality starting points. A second prototype was therefore implemented, allowing a higher degree of interactivity. The second prototype was evaluated with a new group of 50 students. From the two evaluations performed, it can be concluded that both versions of the tool were able to generate useful starting points (either automatically or interactively) that expedited the design process. Additionally, in the second experiment, we found that neither the nature (automatic or interactive) nor the quality of the starting point seems to have any effect on the perceived quality of the final projects.