Balancing thermal and luminous autonomy in the assessment of building performance

This paper proposes and evaluates a novel approach that simultaneously uses thermal and luminous autonomy for the assessment of human-centered passive design strategies, introducing a potential way to integrate these two metrics in the design process. In this study, we assessed the advantages and limitations of applying the two autonomy metrics with energy and lighting simulations in two climates. We developed a novel visualization to display the hourly thermal and luminous autonomy values for an entire year. The results showed that when we consider the two metrics together, designers may have contradicting design directions to mitigate the solar radiation; for example, the space is overly cool, but it is overlit at the same time, or the space is overly warm, but the daylight metrics predicts it is underlit. The visualization categorizes thermal and visual comfort in nine combinations allowing the designers to understand the trade-off relationships between thermal and visual conditions of the space.