Jinzhao Wang

🌞 Adaptive Facade Tool Based on Sun Hour Analysis (AdaSUN)

👤 Intended Users

Architects, environmental designers, and façade engineers who aim to optimize early-stage building envelope designs for solar exposure and indoor comfort.

🔍 Need You’re Trying to Provide a Solution or Support For

Buildings with extensive solar exposure often suffer from overheating and glare. Designers need a fast and intuitive way to analyze sun exposure on façades and automatically generate adaptive panel systems that mitigate solar gain without manually adjusting each surface. Current workflows are often time-intensive, non-parametric, and hard to adjust dynamically.

This tool fills the gap by coupling sun-hour analysis with parametric panel adaptation, helping users make early and effective shading design decisions.

🧩 Inputs

• 📐 Building geometry (a closed massing model)
• 🧭 Orientation and location (for solar analysis)
• 🪟 Panel dimensions (initial width and height of façade panels)
• 🌡️ Sun hour threshold (max allowable sun hours per panel)
• 📊 Panel transformation rule (e.g., reduce width by % if sun hours exceed threshold)

🧠 Underlying Logic of the Model You’ll Implement

1. Sun Hour Analysis using Ladybug:
• Divide building façade into uniformly sized rectangular panels.
• Use Ladybug to compute sun hours for each panel surface.
2. Panel Evaluation:
• Compare each panel’s sun exposure against a user-defined threshold.
3. Adaptive Response:
• If sun hours exceed the threshold, reduce panel width proportionally.
• Wider spacing = more shading, narrower = more exposure.
4. Feedback Loop:
• Optionally update results in real time to refine facade performance iteratively.

📤 Outputs

• 🌇 Visual map of sun hours across the façade (color gradient)
• 🧱 Adaptive panel system where panel widths vary in response to sun exposure
• 📄 Tabulated report showing:
• Panel index
• Sun hour value
• Adjusted panel width
• 🧰 Exportable model in Revit (via Dynamo) or Rhino (via Grasshopper)