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4a661a066142c53ab84981fa6b000619_MIT4_401f18_assignment5

The assignment involves developing an environmental design concept for a 3500m2 innovation/startup space in a chosen city, focusing on daylight availability. Students will work in groups to select a site, conduct climate analysis, and explore massing and window configurations to optimize daylighting. The assignment includes specific tasks and simulation requirements to ensure accurate modeling and analysis of daylight performance.

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11 views4 pages

4a661a066142c53ab84981fa6b000619_MIT4_401f18_assignment5

The assignment involves developing an environmental design concept for a 3500m2 innovation/startup space in a chosen city, focusing on daylight availability. Students will work in groups to select a site, conduct climate analysis, and explore massing and window configurations to optimize daylighting. The assignment includes specific tasks and simulation requirements to ensure accurate modeling and analysis of daylight performance.

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Nome
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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4.401/4.

464 Environmental Technologies in Buildings – Assignment 5

Instructor: Christoph Reinhart

Due Date: Friday of week 7

Type: This is a group assignment.

Daylight Availability Study

In this assignment you will start working in groups on your final course project which is
the development of an environmental design concept for an about 3500m2 innovation/startup
space located in either Chicago, Houston or Seattle, depending on which city you previously
signed up for. Your building should accommodate work spaces for around 250 workers, a
reception area, lavatory, two seminar rooms and a cafe (optional). It is up to you to define
the final program. You may pick any available site within your city and should also consider
external factors such as a site’s walkscore etc. Remember to include neighboring buildings in
your shading and daylighting analysis. The goal of this first assignment is to develop and
evaluate a series of massing options and façade designs that you will then further refine in
future assignments.

Task 1: Site selection and climate analysis


As a first step browse different vacant lots throughout your city and pick a site. For
your selection it does not matter whether the site is actually for available for development.
However, you should come up (and state) with a few reasons supporting your choice. These
reasons may range from proximity of other businesses or educational facilities to access to
public transportation. Create a simple massing model of the surrounding buildings and
evaluate the annual external shading situation for your site using sun path diagrams and/or
radiation maps. Formulate three to four guiding principles for your design.

Task 2: Daylight massing study


Explore at least three different massing variants on your site with a generic window to
wall ratio of 40%, calculate the spatial daylight autonomy (sDA300lux[50%]) for all three variants
and decide which variant you want to continue working on going forward. Show visualizations
of your sDA300lux[50%] calculations and report the percentage of your building that is “daylit.”

Task 3: Window-to-wall ratio study


For your favorite massing variant from Task 2, explore at least three different window
and skylight configurations to see in how improve the daylight availability throughout all

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regularly occupied spaces within the building. Possible interventions include changing window
sizes and positions as well as adding light shelves or blinds. Discuss your findings.

Simulation Assumptions
Make sure that your Rhino file units are in meter. For the outside ground assume a
reflectance of 20%. For interior surfaces, assume 50% for walls, 20% for floors and 80% for
ceilings. You may pick any glazing type of your liking. The grid of sensors should be 0.85m
above the floor with a spacing of 0.5m. Simulation parameters should at least be ab = 4 and
ad =1500 (see also the simulation checklist below).

Table: Daylight Simulation Checklist.


Before you start Did you decide which daylighting performance metrics to simulate and how to
interpret the results?

Do you have a general idea of what the results should look like? E.g. a mean
daylight factor in a standard sidelit space should lie between 2% and 5%; interior
illuminance should lie between 100 lux and 3000 lux and daylight autonomies
should range from 60% to 90% throughout the space.

Have you verified that the simulation program that you intend to use has been
validated for the purpose that you intend to use it for, i.e. that the simulation
engine produces reliable results and that the program supports the sky models
related to your performance metric of choice? (An example would be the old CIE
overcast sky for daylight factor calculations.)

Have you secured credible climate data for your building site? (This is only required
for climate-based daylighting performance metrics.)

Preparing the Did you model all significant neighboring obstructions such as adjacent buildings

Scene and trees?

Did you model the ground plane?

Did you model wall thicknesses, interior partitions, hanging ceilings and larger
pieces of furniture? Try to model all space dimensions at least within a 5cm
tolerance. Façade details should be modeled with a 2cm tolerance.

Did you consider window frames and mullions by either modeling them
geometrically or by using reduced visual transmittances for windows and skylights?

Window glazings:

- Did you check that all window glazings only consist of one surface? Several CAD
tools model double/triple glazings as two/three closely spaced parallel surfaces
whereas daylight simulation programs tend to assign the optical properties of
multiple glazings to a single surface.

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- Did you check that all windows are ’inserted’ into the wall planes and not
"overlaid" on the wall surfaces? Several CAD tools suggest that you can create
and visualize a window in many different ways, one simply being the placement
of a window surface on top of a wall surface which case end up with two
coplanar surfaces. As a result the simulation program will either ignore the
window or somehow ‘guess’ which surface to consider.

Did you assign meaningful material properties to all scene components?

Did you model any movable shading devices such as venetian blinds? If yes, do the
results make sense?

Setting up the Make sure that you set up your project files correctly. This may involve:
simulation - Checking that your project directory and file names do not contain any blanks (“
“).

- Verifying that all sensors have the correct orientation, i.e. work plane sensors are
facing up and ceiling sensors are facing down.

- Setting the resolution of the work plane to 0.5m x 0.5m or 1ft x 1ft and placing it
around 0.85m above the floor.

- Selecting simulation parameters that correspond to the ‘scene complexity’. To do


so you should consult the technical manual of your simulation program.

- Selecting the correct sky model (CIE, Perez, etc.).

*) For a scene of low complexity (typical sidelit space with a standard window) the Radiance simulation
parameters should be: ab= 4; ad =1500; ar=100, as=20; aa = 0.1; av=0 0 0.

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4.401/4.464 Environmental Technologies in Buildings Fall 2018

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