Even if the potential of environmental design to cause morphogenesis has been recognised widely, it remains so far unexplored because its main principles – related to building’s physics – are open to many architectural translations. Up to now the environmental input in architecture is limited in most of the cases to passive optimised strategies applied in their technical dimension rather than in their design implications. Therefore, this research was set to investigate the potential of environmental design, and more specifically the context of solar control and daylight relation, from a morphogenetic point of view. More specifically, through the exploration of parameters that affect this relation, the study produced performance thresholds in geometrical terms that can be applied as the environmental input for form generation in a digital design platform. The outcome of the research is the critical point of morphogenetic strategies and environmental input, contextualised in a reference case of office self-shaded forms in London climate (latitude= 51.5, longitude=-0.1). In practice, this becomes a useful guide of the design process for environmental driven forms’ generation.

Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design have some interesting tutorials on the daylighting and getting started with Ecotect and Radiance for lighting analysis. They also have an excellent introduction on exporting Rhino models to Ecotect.

I feel these are great introductions especially for ungraduate students of architecture who want to incorporate basic daylighting studies in their projects.

Link: Harved G(SD)^2