Sky View Factor (update)

I have updated the sky view factor otl - fixed some bugs

The link is the same as before:

• http://files.patrick.janssen.name/2010/svf.zip

Unobstructed Vision Area

The Unobstructed Vision Area (UVA) is a useful way of assessing how much view each window in the design gets. Here is an otl to calculate the UVA. This gives UVA as a percentage - 100% means that you have a 100% view, while 0% means you have no view at all (i.e. there is a wall directly in front of your window).

• http://files.patrick.janssen.name/2010/uva.zip

See Professor Edward Ng's paper on the use of UVA in Hong Kong.

• http://www.vickycheng.com/Research/Daylight%20for%20High%20Density%20Cities.pdf

Kees Christiaanse

"SITUATIONS" Urban Design Strategies and Resources by Kees Christiaanse on 01 March 2010 (Monday), 7pm at LR427

This lecture should be relevant to your project - so please make sure you attend. 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kees_Christiaanse

Belinda Yuen

Belinda Yuen from the Department of Real Estate has written an informative article about housing in Singapore. It also has some useful statistics:

• http://www.huduser.org/periodicals/cityscpe/vol11num1/cityscapevol11num1.pdf#page=9

(Note: it is the first article - page 3 to 18)

Sky View Factor

You need to start thinking about how to evaluate your urban morphologies. One interesting measure that is used a lot is called the 'Sky View Factor'. It is the percentage of visible sky that you can see from any point. 100% indicates that you can see the whole sky (i.e. a half dome), and 0% indicates that you can't see any sky.

I have created an otl for calculating SVF. Here it is.

• http://files.patrick.janssen.name/2010/svf.zip

Five million

I have created a Houdini file that generates some city layouts for a 1 km x 1 km square area, with 5 million sq meters of space. Here it is:

• http://files.patrick.janssen.name/2010/five_million.hipnc

Design project

Thanks all for the presentations on Firday. The issues that were raised will be looked into, particularly the various odd results that you got form some of the simulations.

Now for the next stage. Here is the brief:

• The site is one square kilometer (1km x 1km) in the Marina Bay area. Please see the houdini file for the exact location: http://files.patrick.janssen.name/2010/site.zip
• The task is to develop a proposal for a mixed-use urban morphology that is high density and that also provides good quality of life.
• Mixed-use in this case means that the number of people working in the area should be equal to the number of people living in the area.
• High density means an overall ratio of 5 (i.e. 5 million sq meters). This ratio is a little bit lower than the existing URA proposal for Marina Bay.
• Good quality of life means thinking about various issues that make life enjoyable. These will include daylight, ventilation, views, privacy, open spaces, good transport, noise, etc. The importance of these issues will be different for residential, commercial , and office.

For the site, you will need to consider how to connect to the 4 different edge conditions:

• North West: Shenton Way, Robinson Road and the CBD
• North East: Buildings on the Harbour Front, including The Sail
• South East: land to be developed at a later stage - plot ratio to be approximately 10.
• South West: ECP express way and container port.

Pareto graphs

For your variants, you need to plot out the results for cooling versus electric lighting, both in kWh/m2/year.

So for example 6, this would be as follows:

• Total building area = 7200.00 m2
• Simulation period = 22 days
• Cooling: District Cooling = 46914.56 kWh
• Therefore cooling = (46915 / 7200) * (356/22) = 105 kWh/m2/year
• Electricity: Interior Lighting = 1834.80 kWh
• Therefore lighting = (1834 / 7200) * (356/22) = 4 kWh/m2/year

On the pareto graph, you are trying to minimise both, so points closer to the origin are better.

You will notice immediately that the lighting cannot compete with the cooling. But this is only in terms of energy. There may be other reasons why you think daylight is important - e.g. the well-being of the office workers. So it is still valid to plot lighting against cooling, even though lighting uses much less energy.