Analysis

Buildings can be measured in far more ways than dimensions alone. Energy, carbon, heat, daylight, solar exposure, materials, water, cost, comfort, resilience, and environmental conditions all describe how a building will perform. Yet understanding those things usually means leaving the design environment, preparing another model, entering the same information again, running specialist software, interpreting the results, and assembling them into something other people can understand. Corvus brings analysis into the project itself, using the geometry, intelligent objects, materials, systems, site conditions, and context already there to help you understand the building as you design it.

Analyze the building you are already designing.

You should not have to build one model for design and another for analysis. Corvus uses the project itself as the foundation for understanding performance, deriving the representations an analysis requires from the same geometry, objects, materials, spaces, relationships, and context you are already developing. The design model and the analytical model should not have to become two different versions of the truth.

Start before you know everything.

Early design is full of incomplete information, but that does not mean analysis has to wait. A project may begin with little more than a location, orientation, approximate area, massing, occupancy, glazing percentage, and a few assumptions about construction. That can already tell you something. Corvus lets analysis begin with what is known, make reasonable assumptions where necessary, and become more precise as the project develops.

Let the analysis mature with the design.

A generic exterior wall may eventually become a fully defined assembly. An assumed glazing ratio may become actual windows with known performance. A conceptual mechanical strategy may become selected equipment with operating schedules. As the model becomes more specific, Corvus can use that additional intelligence to refine the analysis without making you start over.

Know what the answer is based on.

A result is only as useful as the information behind it. Corvus can distinguish between known information, calculated information, assumptions, defaults, external data, and values that still need to be confirmed. Instead of presenting every result with the same certainty, Corvus can help you understand what the analysis knows, what it is assuming, and where better information would improve the answer.

Know what you do not know.

Perhaps the wall insulation has not been selected. Perhaps occupancy is still an assumption. Perhaps the glazing performance is unknown. Perhaps neighboring buildings have not been modeled. Perhaps the structural system has not yet been decided. Corvus can surface the missing information that matters, helping you understand not simply that an analysis is incomplete, but what would make it better.

Give intelligent objects something to contribute.

A wall is more useful when it knows what it is made from. A window is more useful when it knows its thermal and solar performance. A space is more useful when it understands its occupancy and use. A site is more useful when it understands climate, topography, water, vegetation, surrounding buildings, and regulatory constraints. The more the project understands about itself, the more Corvus can understand about how it will perform.

Understand energy while you design.

Energy performance should not be something discovered after the architecture is largely resolved. Corvus can help evaluate energy use as the building develops, considering geometry, orientation, envelope performance, glazing, occupancy, climate, systems, schedules, solar exposure, and other factors that influence demand. Change the building, and the analysis can change with it.

See where heat comes from and where it goes.

Buildings gain and lose heat through walls, roofs, floors, glazing, infiltration, ventilation, equipment, occupants, and the sun. Corvus can help make those relationships visible so that performance is not reduced to a single number at the end of a calculation. See where heat is entering, where it is escaping, what is driving the load, and which design decisions might change it.

Design with the sun.

The sun is not an external analysis to be imported into architecture. It shapes daylight, heat gain, comfort, shading, energy use, materials, outdoor space, and the experience of the building itself. Corvus can help you understand solar exposure throughout the year, test shading strategies, study direct sunlight, evaluate daylight, and see how changes in orientation, massing, openings, and surrounding context affect the result.

Make passive design measurable.

Orientation, thermal mass, natural ventilation, shading, daylight, envelope performance, glazing, and landscape can all reduce the amount of work a building's mechanical systems need to do. Corvus can help architects test those strategies while they are still design decisions, making passive heating, passive cooling, solar control, and other environmental ideas something that can be explored rather than merely asserted.

Understand the carbon you are drawing.

Carbon is embedded in materials, assemblies, construction, replacement, operation, and energy use. Corvus can connect quantities in the model with material and performance data to help estimate embodied carbon, operational carbon, and eventually the building's broader carbon consequences. As materials and systems become better defined, the estimate can become better defined with them.

Know how much is really there.

A building model already contains enormous amounts of quantity information, but extracting it often requires carefully constructed schedules, specialized takeoff workflows, exports, spreadsheets, and manual reconciliation. Corvus can use the geometry and intelligence already in the project to understand areas, lengths, volumes, counts, assemblies, and materials without requiring the architect to think like the database underneath them. Ask how much concrete, glass, gypsum board, insulation, flooring, cladding, or any other material is in the building. The project should be able to answer.

Understand the site as part of the analysis.

Performance does not stop at the exterior wall. Sun, climate, wind, terrain, drainage, flood conditions, groundwater, vegetation, neighboring buildings, infrastructure, and other site conditions influence what can be built and how it will perform. When site context and building geometry belong to the same project, environmental analysis can become part of design rather than a separate exercise around it.

See risk before it becomes a problem.

A floodplain can affect where a building sits. Solar exposure can affect overheating. A material decision can dramatically change embodied carbon. Additional glazing can improve daylight while increasing cooling demand. A change in massing can improve one performance measure while making another worse. Corvus can help make those consequences visible while there is still time to do something about them.

Compare alternatives, not just results.

Analysis becomes most useful when it helps make a decision. Rotate the building. Change the glazing. Add shading. Modify the wall assembly. Reduce the floor plate. Change a material. Test another structural system. Corvus can help compare alternatives against the criteria that matter to the project so that performance becomes another way of evaluating design choice.

See the analysis in the model.

A spreadsheet of results can tell you what happened. Sometimes you need to see where it happened. Corvus can bring analysis back into the geometry itself, allowing performance to be understood spatially through overlays, diagrams, surfaces, spaces, objects, and other views of the building. Solar exposure, daylight, heat loss, carbon intensity, material quantities, environmental risk, and other conditions can become visible where they occur.

Ask the building questions.

How much energy will this design use? Which facade is gaining the most heat? Which rooms receive too much afternoon sun? What is driving the embodied carbon? How much concrete is in the project? Which spaces have inadequate daylight? What happens if the glazing changes? What information is preventing a more reliable answer? When the project contains geometry, objects, relationships, materials, context, and performance information together, analysis can begin to feel less like operating software and more like interrogating the building.

Stop entering the same information twice.

Location has already been established. Walls have already been drawn. Materials have already been selected. Spaces already have uses. Windows already have sizes and orientations. The site already contains surrounding conditions. Corvus can use what the project already knows instead of asking you to repeatedly reconstruct the building for every new calculation.

Keep analysis close to the decision.

The longer it takes to run an analysis, the less often it gets run. The more specialized the workflow, the more likely it is to happen after the important decisions have already been made. Corvus brings feedback closer to the moment of design, so analysis can help shape the building rather than merely evaluate what has already been decided.

Turn analysis into something you can share.

Doing the calculation is only part of the work. Someone still needs to explain the assumptions, organize the findings, create the graphics, document the methodology, identify the important results, and turn everything into a coherent deliverable. Corvus can use the project, the analysis, its sources, its assumptions, and its visualizations together to help produce clear, ready-to-share reports without rebuilding the story somewhere else.

Let the report stay connected to the project.

A report becomes obsolete the moment the building changes unless the information behind it remains connected. Corvus can keep analysis and reporting tied to the project that produced them, making it easier to understand what was analyzed, which version of the design it described, what assumptions were used, and what has changed since. The deliverable should not be the end of the intelligence. It should be another expression of it.

Make performance part of design.

Analysis should not belong only to specialists, happen only at milestones, or appear only when somebody asks for a report. It should be available whenever a design decision raises a question worth answering. Corvus brings geometry, intelligent objects, materials, context, analysis, and reporting into one continuous project, so architects can understand more about the buildings they are designing while they are still designing them.

Join our waitlist.

You’ve already waited 49 years. What’s another two? AEC professionals have spent decades jumping through hoops and creating workarounds for convoluted software. No one dares to build something that will challenge the status quo. It's time for something fundamentally different and unapologetically human. Join the waitlist.