A comprehensive analysis of parametric design approaches for solar integration with buildings: A literature review

Abstract

Modern urban architecture is innovative, involves integrated solar technologies to increase sustainability, by providing efficient energy solutions, and involves stakeholders from multiple domains, with specific concerns. Such development, however, leads to complex interrelationships among disciplines and relies on models to simulate different aspects. To address these, the parametric design approach is widely adopted, enabling the generation of several urban designs in the early stage, and evaluating these across several objectives. This provides possibilities for creating collaborative, multi-disciplinary workflows for energy projects at different scales. This paper provides a critical overview of the possibilities offered by the parametric design, to increase the sustainability of advanced buildings, by putting a focus on solar energy. This paper analyses the parametric design across five categories: design scope, application, technology, objective, and implementation method. No review article currently highlights all these aspects to observe overall research in the field. The results indicate that the parametric design is prominent on a single building-scale, while windows in building-scale and building forms in district-scale models are widely manipulated parameters. Most models are limited to BIPV, shader, and solar façade technologies, daylight and solar power applications, and energy and comfort-related objectives, the majority of which are implemented using dedicated parametric modeling tools. Further ongoing research trends emphasize how parametric design transforms the field and creates opportunities for designers working in building energy research. The analytical results help to find current barriers, and future initiatives to implement the parametric design at a wider spread for solar integration into buildings.