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This paper proposes a novel multi-criteria method for building massing based on energy performance and solar access allowed to the surrounding buildings (Mixed Solar Envelope (MSE) method). We used a single thermal zone simulation-based methodology to validate the method. We applied the MSE method in a generic urban zone located in Tallinn, Estonia...
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Context 1
... office rooms with WWR of 80% (Figure 4b), the total energy savings are much larger than those related to residential rooms: between 33% and 73%. This significant difference is due to the higher internal heat gains related to office use (Table 2). Moreover, for office rooms with WWR of 40%, the presence of a MSE might help to save total annual energy: annual energy savings of 3-24%, 1-5%, and 3-14% for rooms facing south, east, and west, respectively. ...
Citations
... The concept of the solar envelope (SE) is not new, and it has been used for decades to propose building massing without compromising the solar access rights of the existing buildings (Knowles, 1980). Indeed, SE as its evolution, the novel Reverse Solar Envelope (RSE) have been included in several design workflows in order to consider SA during the design process including single plots buildings (Sepúlveda & luca, 2020), residential clusters on multiple subplots (Sepúlveda & Luca, 2022b), trade-offs between energy consumption and solar access Sepúlveda & Luca, 2022a), facade optimization to balance daylight and overheating protection using machine learning (Sepúlveda, Eslamirad, Salehi, et al., 2023), rules of thumb or solely prediction formulas . In summary, the use of performance-driven design is being more common nowadays when simulation-tools are more developed/validated, documented, affordable, and accessible than in the past. ...
... This paper presents the current step of a research for the development of a method to help investigating new building forms with the potential of reducing energy use while guaranteeing healthiness of existing premises in urban environments [29]. Building on the new generation methods for solar envelopes and shading devices with energy considerations, the scientific novelty of the proposed method is to consider the influence of discretized elements of the potential building volume on energy use and on required sunlight exposure of surrounding premises, to help realizing context energy and solar access optimized conceptual building forms. ...
The built environment contributes significantly to climate change being responsible of a large portion of global energy use and CO2 emissions. In the scientific community it become evident that designing urban environments and buildings which do less harm or have a neutral impact on the environment is not enough anymore to realize sustainable cities. This paper presents a method to help design buildings with a positive impact on the context, filling vacant lots in dense urban environments. The method defines optimal building boundaries to reduce energy use of existing surrounding premises, while guaranteeing them adequate solar access. A two-step computational workflow was developed. In the first step building space positive, negative and neutral effect on cooling, heating and electric lighting energy use is analyzed in consideration of shading factors and beam solar energy. In the second, the effect of the positive and neutral building space on sunlight exposure of neighboring premises is considered, generating energy and sunlight optimized conceptual building massing. Initial results of the method application in several urban conditions, different building use and scenarios and in different cities are presented and discussed.KeywordsClimate changeResilient urban designBuilding energy useSunlight exposureEnvironmental simulationsComputational design
... The procedure is highly flexible. It allows obtaining several building massing variations via combinations of fit voxels and analyzing the performance of trade-off solutions [48]. Additionally, the subtractive generation procedure of discretized forms allows for initial performance analyses of alternative generated conceptual building massings [49] (Figure 6). ...
... dure is highly flexible. It allows obtaining several building massing variations via combinations of fit voxels and analyzing the performance of trade-off solutions [48]. Additionally, the subtractive generation procedure of discretized forms allows for initial performance analyses of alternative generated conceptual building massings [49] (Figure 6). ...
... Recent research works investigated building massing and form generation in urban environments in consideration of the sunlight received by context buildings and the different performances of the generated building form related to daylight, solar access and views [45,46,49]. State-of-the-art research investigated co-simulation methods to define building forms that are capable of balancing used and generated energy [55], provide solar exposure or shading when needed and sky exposure [52], and reduce the energy use of surrounding premises [48]. Other studies focused on multi-evaluation approaches that integrate environmental simulations and building massing calculations to find the optimal trade-offs of sunlight or solar radiation received by the building envelope or the daylight and buildable floor area and volume in consideration of different urban environments [22,50,53]. ...
Researchers, architects and planners are increasingly urged to develop and apply sustainable methods and solutions to reduce the impact of the built environment on climate, adapt cities to climate change and reduce or eliminate resource depletion and building-related carbon emissions. In recent years, taking advantage of state-of-the-art computational and environmental design tools, researchers and designers are developing new digital workflows, methods and solutions to investigate climate-optimal and performative buildings and urban forms. This perspective paper analyses state-of-the-art computational methods; form generation processes; and tools, criteria and workflows that present how these are integrated into climatic form finding, allowing the improvement of building and urban environmental performances. Additionally, current challenges and future directions are presented.
There is a lack of facade design methods for early design stages to balance thermal comfort and daylight provision that consider the obstruction angle as an independent variable without using modeling and simulations. This paper aims to develop easy-to use solar radiation-based prediction method for the design of office building facades (i.e., design parameters: room size, window-to-floor ratio, and glazing thermal/optical properties) located in urban canyons to balance daylight provision according to the European standard EN 17037:2018 and thermal comfort through specific cooling capacity. We used a simulation-based methodology that includes correlation analyses between building performance metrics and design parameters, the development of design workflows, accuracy analysis, and validation through the application of the workflows to a new development office building facades located in Tallinn, Estonia. The validation showed that the mean percentage of right/conservative predictions of thermal comfort classes is 98.8% whereas for daylight provision, it is higher than 75.6%. The use of the proposed prediction method can help designers to work more efficiently during early design stages and to obtain optimal performative solutions in much shorter time: window sizing in 73152 room combinations in 80 seconds.
This investigation proposes a 7-steps multi-performance method for urban densification and applies it to an existig urban block located in Tallinn, Estonia. This design workflow has two main features lacked by previous methods: (1) flexible, easy-to-use and fast, minimizing the dependence on time-consuming simulations with need of daylight and dynamic thermal modeling/simulation; (2) performance-driven differentiation of the FAR metric (i.e. room area, daylight, SA, and overheating protection levels). It was used to find the optimal densification strategy depending on 7 different design criteria defined as trade-offs between: floor-area ratio, daylight provision, solar access, and outdoor thermal comfort.
