A Novel Parametric Method for Assessing View Towards Green in the Early Stages of Urban Design

Enhancing the wellbeing of the residents in a building entail consideration of visual connection with natural elements in the urban environment. Current approaches for evaluating the presence of green elements in the field of view primarily concentrate on floorplans. Thus, they are not efficient to evaluate large areas such as blocks and neighborhoods during the building massing design phase due to uncertainties regarding the building interiors. To tackle this limitation, we developed a method, and a metric called the Building Visible Green Index (BVGI) to assess the ability of building facades to connect interior spaces with the surrounding green environment. The parametric workflow performs ray-casting from façade samples, detects obstructions, and analyzes the intersections with green elements. BVGI allows for the early-stage evaluation of urban design solutions for many buildings by measuring the weighted proportion of visible green elements such as lawns and trees. The paper showcases the parametric workflow of the BVGI method and its potential in one case study.