Why does it matter to model the real terrain and real neighboring buildings?
◦ Which aspects of a building design are most affected by surrounding context?
◦ What kinds of mistakes only become visible once the context is present?
Surrounding context determines energy efficiency metrics, as well as how a design fits into its surroundings.
Many performance and human comfort metrics only become visible when the surrounding context is included. For instance, nearby buildings affect wind patterns. If there is a wind tunnel created by adjacent buildings, then it is essential for our building to counteract this. Similarly, larger buildings can cast shadows on smaller buildings. When designing in an area with many high rises, it is important to keep this in mind and find ways that a building can access sun in spite of the circumstances, else a designer could end up constructing something entirely covered by shadows. Other aspects of terrain such as hills and valleys (while also determining variables like wind and shadows) can affect construction cost and building accessibility. Without surrounding context, a design may seem acceptable, but the context is necessary to show the problems that come from the design.
Aside from energy efficiency considerations, it is also important to consider surrounding context in order to make something that is appealing to people and belongs in the neighborhood. A thirty-story office building would not belong in a street of single-family homes. A commercial building with its back door facing the main commercial strip would get far less foot traffic than it would if it could directly advertise to people walking down the strip. The design of the building in and of itself may be good, but it is critical to consider surrounding context to make sure that the building fits into its environment.
Should the building adapt to the site, or the site to the building?
◦ From a developer's perspective?
◦ From a designer's perspective?
◦ From the perspective of the neighbors who already live there?
Sun hours and wind frequently want opposite things from the same massing.
◦ How should a team break the tie when two analyses disagree?
◦ Who should have the final say, and at what point in the process?
Sunlight and wind both travel through space and are stopped by mass, meaning that maximizing/minimizing sun may also maximize/minimize wind, even when this is not the desired outcome. A team should break the tie by evaluating each scenario and see which one provides more comfort to a human inhabiting that area. For instance, in warm climates, a very shady place with little wind may be preferable to a warm place with very strong and uncomfortable wind. Teams should develop an index between the two metrics to evaluate overall human comfort.
The developer or whoever is paying for the project should get the final say since it is their project, but they should take advice from their designers or community members. The decision should be determined relatively early on in the process given that a team has a sense of the sun and wind patterns their building creates even at the rough massing stage (as we saw with our designs). Deciding this early on also gives designers time to think on ways to compensate for any deficiencies with added design elements, such as installed heat lamps, heated floors in residential units, or wind shields.
Forma's rapid analyses are fast because they are approximate.
◦ What is a rapid operational energy analysis leaving out?
◦ At what stage does that approximation stop being good enough?
◦ What would you need before putting a performance number in front of a client?
You generated three proposals and recommended one.
◦ Did the analysis choose it, or did you choose it and then find numbers that agreed?
◦ What would you have had to see to abandon your favorite option?
◦ If the lot next door is built out in three years, does your recommendation hold?
My final decision was a combination of my qualitative design choices and the numbers that the quantitative analysis revealed. The metrics for my chosen proposal and another proposal were relatively aligned (both blocked out noise, got similar amounts of sun and daylight, and had similar carbon footprints), so, from there, I had to decide what distinguished one from another. I wanted a building that had large massing on a small footprint but still looked inviting to a person passing by, so I chose the building that had stepped massing, lower in the front and higher in the back.
For me to abandon my favorite choice, it would have had to perform poorly on many metrics and in ways that I did not believe I could solve through simple changes. For instance, my building has a central courtyard that doesn’t always get a lot of daylight, but I believe that I can edit some massing arrangements to fix this. However, if I believed I had done everything I could to encourage daylighting and there still was very little daylight coming in, then I would have wanted to choose a different design. If my building also performed more poorly on other metrics such as sound, wind, direct sunlight, or its carbon footprint, then I would have gone with a different choice.
My recommendation would likely hold. There are lots to the north and east of my building. If a building was constructed to the north, this would not affect sunlight/daylight and would be unlikely to cause major changes to other variables such as wind or noise. If the building was constructed to the east, it would only risk making the sunlight/daylight in my courtyard even worse if it were very very tall, but it most likely would not cause major problems with my design. In future iterations of my design, I will continue to keep this possibility in mind to ensure that my building meets the needs of both the present and the future.