Evaluating Urban Forms for Comparison Studies in the Massing Design Stage
Name
sustainability-09-00987.pdf
Size
9.48 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3ff09a9a823af50e14e5f920a1027ea0
Author(s)
Chen, Kian Wee
Norford, Leslie Keith
Date Issued
June 2017
Journal
Sustainability
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
Citation
Chen, Kian and Leslie Norford. "Evaluating Urban Forms for Comparison Studies in the Massing Design Stage." Sustainability 9, 6 (June 2017): 987 © 2017 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We introduce five performance indicators to facilitate the comparison of urban massing design in the early design stages. The five simple indicators are based on existing studies and cover three main performance areas that are sensitive to urban form changes: solar, ventilation, and connectivity potentials. The first three indicators—the non-solar heated façade to floor area index, daylight façade to floor area index, and photovoltaics envelope to floor area index—measure the solar potential. The frontal area index measures the ventilation potential and the route-directness index measures the connectivity potential. The indicators are simple to use, as they only require urban geometry data for their calculation. We demonstrate the indicators in two case studies; variations in the values of these indicators show that they are sensitive to urban form changes and can be used in comparative studies to identify better performing urban forms among massing designs. We implement the indicators as an open-source Python library, Pyliburo, that designers and researchers can readily access and integrate into their existing design workflows. Keywords: performance-based urban design; performance indicators; connectivity; urban ventilation; solar analysis
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/su9060987
