A methodology for daylight optimisation of facades: An investigation of the opening design strategy with cellular automata for an office building

Abstract

Daylighting has an important role in sustainable architecture as it affects the energy consumption in a building. Especially for an office building, daylight helps not only to reduce the load on artificial lighting but also to promote work efficiency through promoting good human health, wellbeing and user comfort. The objective of this research is to invent an innovative façade design strategy that comes from the development of digital technology and dynamic daylight performance measuring methods. Thus, the various parameters are studied through the computational process of Cellular Automata (CA) to generate the several alternative opening patterns on the building facade. The each CA design values were tested under static and dynamic sky condition to analyze the quality and quantity of daylight and visual comfort throughout the whole year. The results were compared to find the optimum alternative designs in terms of the daylighting design criteria, which were researched from building code, standard and design guidelines for the office building. Finally, the research of an adaptive façade design strategy was concluded with the results from the above hybridization of generative and performative design methodology. This study discovers the architectural design approach from the CA and it will make not only progress in building façade aesthetics, but also human comfort with building sustainability.