using computational tools for a reflective façade to increase daylight quality in both target and reflective building
Student: Juliette Truffert
Professional Tutor : Sébastien Perrault – ECHOES.PARIS
Academic Tutor : Minh Man Nguyen
Date : 2017-2018
In the last decades, it has been demonstrated in many studies that daylighting has to be considered as a key topic in architecture. First for an efficient daylighting strategy allows to reduce the global energy impact of the building and secondly because the quality of light in a space has a direct and strong impact on the health of its users. Sidelighting and toplighting systems using reflective and light conductive materials now flourish in recent buildings as strategies to increase the quality and quantity of daylighting without causing glare problems. Those reflective devices, associated or not with sun tracker systems, are used to collect daylight and redirect it to the areas where it is most needed. On the other hand, reflective surfaces are used for artistic reasons to create beautiful pattern of light. This study aims at conciliating these two approaches by proposing a reflective façade in an urban context which role is twofold: shading a reflecting building and direct reflected light toward a target building where the amount of daylight needs to be increased. The façade is constituted of panels and different algorithms are tested to orient the panels to increase the luminous flux transmitted to the target building but also to create luminous patterns while observing the façade. Illuminance levels at different moments of the year in both reflective and target buildings are computed to asset the efficiency of each algorithm and a glare study is made in the target building to understand which parameters can be used to augment the amount of daylight without causing glare problems.