A method of partition design for open-plan offices based on daylight performance evaluation

Abstract

Daylight performance has a considerable effect on occupants' comfort and satisfaction of office buildings. Nowadays, open offices are a common typical plan, in which the workstations are separated via partitions. These partitions completely affect daylight performance due to their height, material, and arrangement. Therefore, the optimum design of partitions is vital to boost the daylight performance. The current paper presents a method in form of a tool for designing and evaluating of partitions based on the main daylight metrics. Considering the climatic and urban situation of the building (in form of epw file, and the shading effect of adjacent buildings), in addition to the office characteristics (office layout, window size, and orientation), the used method changes the above-mentioned parameters of partitions and evaluates the daylight availability, visual comfort, and lighting energy demand, presented in the form of a Grasshopper plugin. The developed tool has been used to define the optimum workstation layout for an office building in Tehran. Results indicate that an increasing panels' reflectivity compensated reduction of the received daylight caused by partitions height incensement. 20% reduction in partitions reflectivity, and 0.2 m increase of partitions’ height, decrease the spatial daylight autonomy daylight by 9.47% and 4.36%, while increasing the artificial lighting energy consumption up to 10.01% and 6.27%, respectively. The presented tool provides an evaluation method of partitions arrangement optimization in open-offices for designers and architects during the design and retrofit procedure.