Design Journal Entry - Module 4

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Journal Entry For
Module 4 - Conceptual Design - Building Context & Passive Design
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Created
Jan 31, 2025 7:09 AM
Last Edited
Jan 31, 2025 8:31 AM
Created by
J
Josh
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https://pin.it/7idDoFsqa

Your Design Journal entries for this module should highlight:

  • the design alternatives that you modeled and tested
  • the results of the analyses and how they influenced your thinking about how to move forward

Use text , images, web links, movies... Whatever media works best to express your ideas!

Images of Your 3 Design Proposals

#1 many buildings, NE peak

image

#2 One giant building, NW peak

image

#3 main building and accessory building, SE peak

image

Side-By-Side Comparisons of Your Analysis Results

Paste at least 2 screenshots showing the side-by-side comparisons of the analysis results for your 3 proposed building forms here…

Sun Hours

image

Daylight Potential

image

Your Recommendation for the “Best” Design Option

The main things I wanted to explore with this exercise were the tradeoffs between having many small buildings, a single large building, or somewhere in between. I also took this opportunity to scope out different building forms and orientations in relation to the hillside terrain of Sao Paolo.

Starting with my site choice of Sao Paolo, I wanted my building to be something low profile that blended in to the terrain; kind of like an XL hobbit house or the teletubby house. In order to incorporate multiple floors with this low profile constraint, I needed to use Sao Paolo as it was the only hillside site provided to us. Additionally, the green roof design I wish to implement lends itself well to insulating against Sao Paolo’s tropical climate. A secondary benefit that comes from the site location is the amount of rain that Sao Paolo receives, which will be useful in achieving my water efficiency goals.

Since I’m aiming for a design with heavy subterranean usage and low energy usage, some potential challenges I anticipate are getting ample ventilation/temperature control and sufficient natural lighting to the lower levels. Of the building forms and orientations I investigated, I found Proposal #3, the SE facing large main building with accessory building to be the best design to pursue further. Since my roof will be almost entirely covered, I mainly looked at the facade figures on the sun hour analysis to determine how much heat would be entering the building. Since most of my building is underground and will be at a cooler temperature, I thought it might be beneficial to gain as much natural heat as possible and selected the site with most facade sun hours. In a similar vein for getting natural light to lower levels, I selected the site with the greatest overall daylight potential to have the most choices on where to put reflected skylights