Building Analytics at Herzog & de Meuron

The integration of digital workflows to achieve sustainability goals in architecture is rapidly evolving. At the forefront is the intersection of design technologies and building analytics, a field that combines architectural understanding with technical expertise in performance simulation and environmental impact assessment. At Herzog & de Meuron, this expertise is developed by Design Technologies, one part of our Digital Practice team dedicated to aiding project teams throughout the design process.

Michael Drobnik, an Associate and Lead of the Design Technologies group, has been with H&dM for over a decade. He started with us as a BIM Manager on the Children’s Hospital in Zurich and now oversees the entire Design Technologies team, tasked with driving the office’s digital transformation. Aida Ramirez Marrujo, a Senior Architect who runs Building Analytics within the DT team, merged her background in architecture and sustainability to focus on quantifying and optimizing building performance through simulation and data analysis.

Building Analytics

Building analytics sits at the intersection of architecture, design technology, and sustainability science. Unlike traditional engineering consultancies that often operate externally and provide siloed services, our team works closely with project architects throughout the design phases. As Michael states, “For us, the big advantage is speed and integration. The main difference with having in-house capacity is that we can exchange data more efficiently and run design options that wouldn’t be possible externally.” This in-house model ensures rapid feedback loops and a deep integration of sustainability insights — daylight performance, energy efficiency, embodied carbon, and more — directly into architectural decision-making.

This approach also enables the team to be involved early in the process, when design options are still fluid. Michael emphasizes that their work is less about final certification calculations and more about supporting architects with iterative feedback to explore trade-offs and optimize building performance dynamically. This contrasts with conventional models where sustainability consultants typically engage late in the process, limiting the potential for meaningful design inputs.

Collaboration

The collaboration between the Building Analytics team and the office’s broader sustainability experts further enriches this process. While the Sustainability team operates at a strategic level — setting goals, defining targets, and mapping risks — the Building Analytics team translates these ambitions into concrete performance simulations and data-driven insights. Their work is a practical, hands-on extension of sustainability ambitions, embedded in daily project workflows. “If a team is doing façade studies, one of us might go and sit with them. Even if it’s not full-time, it helps to be part of the team and really understand the decisions being made,” Aida explains. “A lot of the important conversations happen in the team space — not outside of it.” This proximity fosters stronger communication and better-informed decisions, since much of the project’s key discussions happen within the design team’s collaborative environment.

Focus on Hortus

Hortus, one of our most important recent projects as well as one of the most sustainable office buildings in the German-speaking world, served as proving ground for Building Analytics. Sustainability was integrated from the outset.

As Michael explains, “With Hortus, we saw an opportunity to test a structured workflow. We reached out to engineers to compare our early simulations—like daylight or PV analyses — with their results. The point wasn’t to replace engineers but to speed up iteration and give them better input. They appreciated the collaboration, and it showed us how we could add value.” Aida continues:

Bespoke Tools for Designing, Not Reporting

While the team relies on industry-standard software for environmental analysis, daylight and thermal studies, and wind simulations, they have developed proprietary tools to address gaps in existing workflows — especially around early-phase life cycle assessment (LCA) and embodied carbon estimation, where most off-the-shelf solutions fall short.

Instead, our in-house tool was developed to use verified data from past projects to create benchmarks, allowing designers to estimate carbon footprints of building elements early on, before detailed modeling is possible. This dynamic carbon budgeting enables architects to redistribute environmental costs across systems—optimizing slabs, façades, or structural components in response to evolving design priorities. This approach not only accelerates design iteration but also integrates performance data like fire ratings, acoustics, and occupancy.

What’s Next

Looking ahead, Michael, Aida and the team are developing a project data platform to benchmark and compare sustainability metrics across our projects. By standardizing BIM models, ensuring data transparency, and structuring key performance indicators, they aim to enable designers to learn from past projects and make better early-phase decisions — even without running full simulations. This integrated, data-driven approach reflects a broader shift in architectural practice from fragmented consultancy towards embedded expertise.