Adaptive façade design for the daylighting performance in an office building: the investigation of an opening design strategy with cellular automata

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, well-being and user comfort. The objective of this research is to develop an innovative facade 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. Each CA design value was tested under static and dynamic sky condition to analyze the quality and quantity of daylight and visual comfort throughout the year. The results were compared to find an optimum alternative design in terms of the daylighting design criteria, from building code, standard and design guidelines for the office building. Finally, research of an adaptive facade 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 facade esthetics, but also human comfort with building sustainability.