This study proposes a novel method of solar geometry by considering the potential application of point cloud data combined with the simulation of solar radiation. With the support of geometric and radiometric information stored in the point cloud such as position information (XYZ) color information (RGB), and reflection intensity (I), architects may compensate for missing information on the existing context during the simulation, especially due to the limited capacity of current 3D modelling sites. However, the dataset often comes in the format of unstructured point cloud data retrieved from merged data scans and as a result, the radiometric information is difficult to occupy due to multiple reference points. Through a 3D subtractive procedure, this study not only examines volumetric samples of the three-dimensional matrix that fulfills the criteria of solar envelopes but also finds the optimal values of the merged data scan for input of solar radiation. In this regard, simulation of solar radiation contributes to identifying the most and the least exposed areas to the sun in existing contexts. This provides information related to visible sun hours that can be used to perform ray tracing analysis between the proposed 3D plot and surrounding contexts. Our proposed method ultimately helps architects not only generate solar geometry based on real contextual settings but also to understand comprehensively the microclimate conditions of the design context.

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As part of the passive design strategy, the development of computational solar envelopes plays a major role to construct a cooperative environmental performance exchange between new buildings and their local contexts. However, the state-of-the-art computational solar envelopes pose a great challenge in understanding site characteristics from a given context. Existing methods predominantly construct 3D context models based on basic architectural geometric shapes, which are often isolated from the surrounding properties of local contexts (i.e., vegetation, materials). Thus, they only focus on context-oriented buildings and energy quantities that unfortunately lack a contextual solar performance analysis. It is clear that this condition may result in a fragmented understanding of the local context during the design and simulation process. With the potential application of attribute point cloud information, it is necessary to consider relevant parameters such as surface and material properties of existing contexts during the simulation of solar geometries, which are currently absent in computational frameworks. As such, the new method is required to enable architects not only to measure specific performances of the local context but also to identify vulnerable areas that may affect the proposed design. This research focuses on exploring an integrated computational design method for solar geometry based on solar and shading envelopes, and geometric and radiometric information from point cloud data. In particular, two computational models consisting of SOLEN (Subtractive Solar Envelopes) and SHADEN (Subtractive Shading Envelopes) are developed, which are applied to temperate and tropical climates, respectively. In design practice, these models help architects to produce informed-design decisions towards high-performed building massing.@en

The increasing population density in urban areas simultaneously impacts the trend of energy consumption in building sectors and the urban heat island (UHI) effects of urban infrastructure. Accordingly, passive design strategies to create sustainable buildings play a major role in addressing these issues, while solar envelopes prove to be a relevant concept that specifically considers the environmental performance aspects of a proposed building given their local contexts. As significant advances have been made over the past decades regarding the development and implementation of computational solar envelopes, this study presents a comprehensive review of solar envelopes while specifically taking into account design parameters, digital tools, and the implementation of case studies in various contextual settings. This extensive review is conducted in several stages. First, an investigation of the scope and procedural steps of the review is conducted to frame the boundary of the topic to be analyzed within the conceptual framework of solar envelopes. Second, comparative analyses between categorized design methods in parallel with a database of design parameters are conducted, followed by an in-depth discussion of the criteria for the digital tools and case studies extracted from the selected references. Third, knowledge gaps are identified, and the future development of solar envelopes is discussed to complete the review. This study ultimately provides an inclusive understanding for designers and architects regarding the progressive methods of the development of solar envelopes during the conceptual design stage@en

As a passive design strategy, solar envelopes play a significant role in determining building mass based on desirable sun access during a predefined period. Nowadays, advancements in the area of computational tools permit designers to develop new methods for establishing solar envelopes. However, current approaches lack an understanding of the existing environment's site characteristics, especially when dealing with geometrical information about the surrounding context. Consequently, this aspect affects the contextual analysis process during the generation of solar envelopes because of insufficient information for the relevant input of simulation modelling. With the support of geometric and radiometric properties stored in point cloud data, such as position (XYZ), colour (RGB), and reflection intensity (I), this study has proposed novel subtractive solar envelopes that specifically consider the surface properties of the existing environment. Through a subtractive mechanism, the proposed method caters to several computational frameworks such as dataset pre-processing that aims to correct erroneous measurement during scanning. In alignment with that, the proposed building's visible sun vectors, optimal normal values, and 3D polyhedra are generated for the hit-or-miss analysis of subtractive solar envelopes. Furthermore, environmental assessments consisting of insolation and glare analysis are performed on the solar envelopes' final geometry. These performance assessments aim to investigate the potential and impact of the generated solar envelopes as it pertains to the existing buildings. Ultimately, this study supports architects not only in producing a new generation of subtractive solar envelopes based on real contextual settings but also in comprehensively understanding the microclimate condition of design context.@en

This study proposes a voxel-based design approach based on the subtractive mechanism of shading envelopes and attributes information of point cloud data in tropical climates. In particular, the proposed method evaluates a volumetric sample of new buildings based on predefined shading performance criteria. With the support of geometric and radiometric information stored in point cloud, such as position (XYZ), color (RGB), and reflection intensity (I), an integrated computational workflow between passive design strategy and 3D scanning technology is developed. It aims not only to compensate for some pertinent aspects of the current 3D site modeling, such as vegetation and surrounding buildings, but also to investigate surface characteristics of existing contexts, such as visible sun vectors and material properties. These aspects are relevant for conducting a comprehensively environmental simulation, while averting negative microclimatic impacts when locating the new building into the existing context. Ultimately, this study may support architects for taking decision-making in conceptual design stage based on the real contextual conditions.@en

Additive Manufacturing (commonly known as 3D printing) technology has become a global phenomenon. In the domain of heritage, 3D printing is seen as a time and cost efficient method for restoring vulnerable architectural structures. The technology can also provide an opportunity to reproduce missing or destroyed cultural heritage, in the cases of conflicts or environmental threats. This project takes the Hippolytuskerk in the Dutch village of Middelstum, as a case study to explore the limits of the existing technology, and the challenges of 3D printing of cultural heritage. Architectural historians, modelling experts, and industrial scientists from the universities of Delft and Eindhoven have engaged with diverse aspects of 3D printing, to reproduce a selected part of the 15th century church. This experimental project has tested available technologies to reproduce a mural on a section of one of the church’s vault with maximum possible fidelity to material, colors and local microstructures. The project shows challenges and opportunities of today’s technology for 3D printing in heritage, varying from the incapability of the scanning technology to capture the existing cracks in the required resolution, to the high costs of speciality printing, and the limited possibilities for combining both printing techniques for such a complex structure.

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As a contextual and passive design strategy, solar envelopes play a great role in determining building mass based on desirable sun access during the predefined period. With the rapid evolution of digital tools, the design method of solar envelopes varies in different computational platforms. However, current approaches still lack in covering the detailed complex geometry and relevant information of the surrounding context. This, consequently, affects missing information during contextual analysis and simulation of solar envelopes. This study proposes a subtractive method of solar envelopes by considering the geometrical attribute contained in the point cloud of TLS (terrestrial laser scanner) dataset. Integration of point cloud into the workflow of solar envelopes not only increases the robustness of final geometry of existing solar envelopes but also enhances awareness of architects during contextual analysis due to consideration of surface properties of the existing environment.@en

This paper investigates a prospective application of point cloud data in supporting the contextual analysis of the built environment during the conceptual design process. Often, the complexity of site information causes architects to neglect several relevant properties that may affect environmental performance analysis, especially when dealing with a complex design case. For example, the current approaches of 3D site modelling lack an understanding of the site characteristics of existing environments with respect to either geometrical or material properties. With the advancement of 3D laser scanning technologies, capturing complex information from real contexts offers great possibilities for architects. From geometric and radiometric information stored within point cloud data, this study specifically proposes a novel approach to contextual analysis that considers material aspects and simulates solar radiation in the real environment. In doing so, three computational stages are developed. First, the correction of a raw dataset is designed to not only minimize errors during the scanning process but to also clean the selected dataset. Second, material exploration and the simulation of solar radiation are respectively used to calculate material properties and solar energy in the existing built environment. Third, an integrated environmental simulation aims at identifying materials found in existing areas within a certain level of insolation. As a form of design decision-making support, the present study ultimately generates a computational workflow for analysing the built environment from which architects may conduct a comprehensive analysis of an existing context before initiating design exploration@en

The prospective application of 3D laser data scanning provides numerous possibilities for investigating environmental performances for architectural design. One of the possibilities includes the practical usability of point cloud data in examining the existing environment. Exploiting this potential would help to increase the information on properties of the real context, which currently often lack during the conceptual design process. As part of this general goal, this research particularly investigates the potentials of the surface attributes contained in the point cloud data such as color, position, and intensity information. The extraction of this information allows mapping of the distribution of surface materials of the existing environment by considering the intensity and the albedo values. The outcome of the research constitutes a catalogue of surface materials that are useful for architects as a decision support environments. In parallel with computational design flow, this research ultimately aims at delivering a novel method for architects to perform site analysis comprehensively@en

High-performing architecture should be designed by taking into account the mutual dependency between the new building and the local context. The performative architecture plays an important role to avert any unforeseen failures after the building has been built; particularly ones related to the microclimate impacts that affect the human comfort. The use of the concept of solar envelopes helps designers to construct the developable mass of the building design considering the solar access and the site obstruction. However, the current analysis method using solar envelopes lack in terms of integrating the detailed information of the existing context during the simulation process. In architectural design, often the current site modelling not only absent in preserving the complex geometry but also information on the surface characteristics. Currently, the emerging applications of point clouds offer a great possibility to overcome these limitations, since they include the attribute information such as XYZ as the position information and RGB as the color information. This study particularly presents a comparative analysis between the manually built 3D models and the models generated from the point cloud data. The modelling comparisons focus on the relevant factors of solar radiation and a set of simulation to calculate the performance indicators regarding selected portions of the models. The experimental results emphasize an introduction of the design approach and the dataset visibility of the 3D existing environments. This paper ultimately aims at improving the current architectural decision of support environment means, by increasing the correspondence between the digital models for performance analysis and the real environments (context of design) during the conceptual design phase.@en

The utilization of point cloud as a 3D laser scanning product has reached across multi-disciplines in terms of data processing, data visualization, and data analysis. This study particularly investigates further the use of typical attributes of raw point cloud data consisting of XYZ (position information), RGB (colour information) and I (intensity information). By exploring the optical and thermal properties of the given point cloud data, it aims at compensating the material and texture information that is usually remained behind by architects during the conceptual design stage. Calculation of the albedo, emissivity and the reflectance values from the existing context specifically direct the architects to predict the type of materials for the proposed design in order to keep the balance of the surrounding Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Therefore, architects can have a comprehensive analysis of the existing context to deal with the microclimate condition before a design decision phase@en

Dealing with solar envelope analysis in architectural design becomes crucial feature because it gives an impact to the building performance analysis in the real environment. Various simulation tools were used by architects play a significant role in determining the design process. However, these tools were not yet confirming the expected performance of the future building design. Manual modeling platform and actual information processing are delivering the main issue on the design operation. This analysis leads to the potential application of point cloud as design medium in architectural domain. This paper furthermore investigates a comparative analysis between point cloud data model-based and the conventional modeling. Some challenging tasks are discussed in related with the point cloud processing in the design framework. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a novel design method for exploring the solar envelope simulation as a part of conceptual design analysis@en