COMPUTER SIMULATION-BASED BUILDING PERFORMANCE ANALYSES (BPA): PRELIMINARY STUDY OF AN OFFICE BUILDING IN POLAND

Building Performance Analyses (BPA) (studies on solar energy, daylighting quality, energy demand, airflow and users' comfort) are critical in contemporary architecture design, because increasingly, building design and construction professionals are required (by stricter rules and sustainability awareness among building users) to deliver high-performance - energy efficient, environmentally friendly, comfortable to their users - buildings. The final result - performance of an occupied building depends on informed design decisions, mainly decisions made by architects at the earliest stages of design. Examples of such decisions include massing and orientation of buildings and facade strategies (window placements and shapes, glazing, light shelves and shading devices). This paper presents how new and innovative simulation methods, techniques and tools for analysing building performance can be used to evaluate and validate these design decisions. The analysed office building (sidelit, open-plan, narrow-plan space) is located in the south of Poland (latitude: 50 degrees N, longitude: 20 degrees E, moist continental climate with temperatures in winter to - 20 degrees C and in summer to 32 degrees C). The state-of-the-art DIVA software (Radiance, Daysim, Evalglare, EnergyPlus) and Climate Consultant were used in the research. It is widely accepted that the best orientation for a passive building is along east-west axis but the higher the latitude and the more overcast sky conditions the smaller difference is between the performance in terms of energy and thermal comfort of south-oriented and west-oriented building. The aim of the study was to examine the influence of building orientation (one of the most important geometric aspects - architectural means that the high performance of buildings can be achieved through) at the latitude of 50 degrees N on: illuminances from daylighting; occupants' visual comfort; heating, cooling and lighting energy consumption. The effect that various electric lighting systems and different glazing properties have on energy efficiency was tested in parallel. The paper also presents an example methodology for evaluating the high performance buildings. The results of the research will contribute to the development of design guidelines for office buildings in southern Poland.