From envelope to layout: Buildings massing and layout generation for solar access in urban environments

The use of daylight for the inhabitants health and comfort purposes and for the energy efficiency of buildings influences significantly the shape and outlook of urban environments. The solar envelope and solar collection surface are methods to define the massing of buildings for direct solar access requirements. They have been recently improved to be used in the design of buildings in relation to the Estonian daylight standard. Nevertheless the solar collection method can be applied only to single buildings with simple shape. The present research investigates the direct solar access performance of building clusters with multiple layouts in different urban areas in the city of Tallinn. Result show that different patterns perform in significant different ways whereas the same cluster types have the best and the least performances in all the cases.