Strategies to control daylight in a responsive skylight system

This research aims to develop a skylight system that responds to both external, environmental conditions and adjustable internal functional demands. The system adapts to different geometries, uses, locations, times and sky conditions. In the design process, the disposition and size of skylights are customized to the context. After construction, the apertures of the skylights control interior conditions. This paper focuses on the dynamic process to control daylight using a case study. The goal is to assure adequate illuminance and low visual contrast. Parametric and environmental software analysis is used to generate and assess solutions. Heuristics strategies are developed to find adequate configurations, given that optimization methods are time and resource consuming. The performance of such configurations is evaluated in specific conditions. An interpolation method is proposed to find configurations adequate to other conditions. A friendly-interface allows selecting the best configuration in real-time using multi-criteria. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.