Daylighting in Buildings: Sustainable Design Strategies for Building Floorplates
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Buildings account for a significant percentage of global energy consumption, and finding ways to improve the efficiency of buildings has become a paramount topic in recent decades. Among the most substantial ways to improve the energy efficiency of a building is to manipulate the floorplate in ways that lets more natural light while reducing the energy loss or gain through the envelope. However, creating buildings that have more natural light comes with a greater construction cost due to longer envelopes. The goal of our research is to determine what aspects of floorplate design maximize the natural light entering a building and minimize the construction costs associated with the building. In my research, I have primarily analyzed a sample from the book, Key Buildings of the 20th Century by Richard Weston, since the book offers a variety of building typologies that would yield a diverse data set. I then measured the building floorplates in AutoCAD, and used a 0-15 foot and a 15-30 foot offsets to determine the area that experiences full natural lighting, partial natural lighting and no natural lighting. Once I determined these areas of natural lighting, I was then able to make graphical comparisons to other qualities of these buildings such as perimeter, height, facade area, number of floors, floor height, etc. to determine how buildings that maximized daylighting and minimized costs accomplished this. Upon analysis, my most notable discovery is that the scaling of buildings plays a significant role in the optimization of the natural lighting within buildings, since a smaller building can have a smaller perimeter to floorplate area ratio and still have significant natural lighting, while a larger building would have to have a larger perimeter to floorplate area ratio to optimize natural lighting. Therefore, optimized typologies depend on the scale of the building.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
CACM - Architecture
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Ermal Shpuza
Daylighting in Buildings: Sustainable Design Strategies for Building Floorplates
Buildings account for a significant percentage of global energy consumption, and finding ways to improve the efficiency of buildings has become a paramount topic in recent decades. Among the most substantial ways to improve the energy efficiency of a building is to manipulate the floorplate in ways that lets more natural light while reducing the energy loss or gain through the envelope. However, creating buildings that have more natural light comes with a greater construction cost due to longer envelopes. The goal of our research is to determine what aspects of floorplate design maximize the natural light entering a building and minimize the construction costs associated with the building. In my research, I have primarily analyzed a sample from the book, Key Buildings of the 20th Century by Richard Weston, since the book offers a variety of building typologies that would yield a diverse data set. I then measured the building floorplates in AutoCAD, and used a 0-15 foot and a 15-30 foot offsets to determine the area that experiences full natural lighting, partial natural lighting and no natural lighting. Once I determined these areas of natural lighting, I was then able to make graphical comparisons to other qualities of these buildings such as perimeter, height, facade area, number of floors, floor height, etc. to determine how buildings that maximized daylighting and minimized costs accomplished this. Upon analysis, my most notable discovery is that the scaling of buildings plays a significant role in the optimization of the natural lighting within buildings, since a smaller building can have a smaller perimeter to floorplate area ratio and still have significant natural lighting, while a larger building would have to have a larger perimeter to floorplate area ratio to optimize natural lighting. Therefore, optimized typologies depend on the scale of the building.