In pursuit of including energy performance as feedback for architects' early stage design decision making, this research presents the theoretical foundation of a designer oriented multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) framework titled evolutionary energy performance feedback for design (EEPFD). Through a comprehensive literature review and gap analysis EEPFD is developed into an MDO methodology that provides energy performance as feedback for influencing architects' decision making more fluidly and earlier than other approaches to date. Secondly, in response to the lack of an MDO best practice EEPFD is investigated and evaluated through two experiments. The first experiment demonstrates the ability to utilize EEPFD provided energy performance as feedback to pursue multiple architectural designs with competing objectives and tradeoffs. The second experiment identifies performance boundaries as a best practice for MDO applications to the early stage architectural design processes. The research synthesizes the results into the basis for measuring these performance boundaries as a best practice in the context where architects must gauge multiple design concepts with varying complexity coupled with performance objectives through EEPFD, thereby enhancing the influence of energy performance feedback on the early stage design process. Finally, future research into the use of performance boundaries for conceptual energy performance design exploration is discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.