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ATELIER DU PONT, PARIS - FRANCE; SCREEN FACADE

Basing its analysis on sun studies to assess the impact of the nearby high-rise buildings, Atelier du Pont suggested adding balconies wherever this made sense. This was a simple idea that was hard to put into practice, yet provided the apartments with outdoor areas and completely remodelled the architecture of the façades. The balconies are suspended from the roof

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A change of skin

#facade #screen #sun studies #balconies #facade detail section #facade detail axon

Sun Studies

So a long time ago we did some solar studies to see the best orientation of the house. Thanks to the wonderful scripting of tumblr, we lost the post. So this one is a bit out of sequence, but we still think it is important for forming an argument for the square plan. The original intention of the solar studies was to see if certain floor plan-to-porch-to-roof combinations performed better than others based on the direction the house faced. We started with two possible porch conditions for our house with the platform and roof rotated in relation to the house. We studies the houses in how the roof overhang will affect the solar gain at certain times, on certain days, in certain seasons. So we did a few drawings to try and understand this aspect of the house. Since the 20K home is designed without central heat or air for multiple reasons the amount of heat gained in the summer and winter is critical for how the home performs. We want to shade as much of the house in the summer to minimize solar heat gain, but in the winter months we need to try to gain as much heat as possible. Here are our findings:

So if you want to know how many drawings we did for a better understanding of how our house performs here is the math:

2 houses X 3 months X 4 times a day X 4 porch orientations X 5 drawings per = 480 total drawings.....

So it was really simple to decipher all this information (joking)

Conclusions:

When the deep overhang faces South it does a good job of shading the South facade. (thank you "Intro to Building Technology")

Since the house it square we see that there is not a "perfect" siting strategy when we base it solely on solar gain. If the house does a good job of shading the Southern facade, it can do a poor job of shading the harsh setting Western sun, and vis verse. We do believe that the equality of the four facades does not provide a "perfect" solar orientation, but does provide ample opportunity for "good" solar orientation no matter which orientation you site the house. We can compare this to David's house (the 8th iteration of the 20K) which is a house that is very long and narrow. If you sited David's house with the long axis facing towards the East and the West, the house would just absolutely bake in the summer. So David's house has a very clear direction it must be sited for solar orientation (long facades facing South, tiny facades facing East and West) We believe that the square lends itself to more flexibility in siting in accordance to solar orientation. This can just be added to the other arguments for the square plan.

Typical logic says to face the porch South with a deep overhang. Maybe its best to site the house with the porch facing North. Since the porch will almost always be used in the warmer months perhaps its best to always have shade for the users. MacArthur's House does a good job of doing this. This is against typical thinking, but we think there is some merit to it... just food for thought.

Perhaps there is logic in specifying the house to have deciduous trees planted to protect the East and West facades in the summer when the trees would have leaves, but allow solar gain in the winter when the trees have lost their leaves.