Solar Studies — Sun Exposure & Shadows

This metric may be the most classical one regarding daylighting. It answers questions like:

• How much sun will I get on these surfaces in the summer season?
• Will I get any sun in Winter?
• Does the new development on the other side of the street will hide the sun?
• etc.

It can be calculated for a theoretical sun that is always shining or taking into account the climatic data available for the site.

It can compute hours of sun for any period, any season, between 2 dates, every morning, etc.

• As all our calculations, SunExposure is based on ray-tracing techniques using Radiance engine. When a climate file is given, SunExposure detects for each hour if the sky should be considered clear or not, then it computes if direct rays from the sun hit the selected surfaces. When sunny sky is chosen, the rays are computed for each hour in the chosen period of time.
• At the end of the ray-tracing process, the results are summarized in a tabular report and the selected surfaces are textured in false colours in order to make the results immediately understandable.
• The palette of colours can be fully customised so that it corresponds to the needs of the project.

• Thresholds are very specific to the functions of each space and depends on the intention of the architect:
  We studied post-anaesthetic recovery room in a large hospital. Though natural light was a must, it is clear that direct sunlight was undesirable on patients in bed.
  On the contrary a bedroom bathed in sunlight in winter can be considered very comfortable.
  
• Therefore there is no predefined threshold in the SunExposure module but any threshold can be determined using the false colour palette. Simply set the limit between 2 colours at your threshold and it will be immediately obvious on the image and in the report.