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Mayine Yu • Cooper Schilling • Jessica Young
Case study of the recently opened John A. Paulson Center for New York University in Manhattan reviews design solutions of façade depth and scale to break down the city-block building in response to the permitted building massing, student and program visibility, and university identity. The Paulson Center is an urban vertical campus building located at the south end of NYU’s Greenwich Village main campus and is truly a four-sided building with multiple entries on all facades. Transparency and deep connections to the streetscape were identified as key goals of NYU and the design team and became critical drivers for development of the exterior.
The Paulson Center facade responds to the academic and social program of the building, NYU’s diverse identity, and the character and vitality of the neighborhood. Interior lobbies and light-filled perimeter circulation, stairs, and lounges engage the vibrancy of the NYU community, creating a conversation between interior activity and urban campus streetscape. Transparency, daylight, and views are optimized and balanced with multiple design, technical, and performance criteria.
The design of the envelope embodies the spirit of an urban university campus building. The wedge units, inset sloped spandrel panels, and entry canopies are painted a deep aubergine color and when in direct sun are reminiscent of the NYU Violet color, while in shade the color recedes to an abstract dark tone. The glazing incorporates custom ceramic frit in a pattern designed to minimize bird strike, a concern for building facades in the urban context, complementing the environmentally responsible design goals of the project.
Presentation by architects and curtain wall consultant to fully narrate design, engineering, and construction methods.
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Christopher Payne
How has the role of the façade evolved in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing fight to combat the climate change crisis? As companies grapple with bringing their employees back to the office, does the building façade have a greater impact on the workplace experience? Could the definition of ‘high-performance façade’ expand to capture this impact on the interior workplace? This paper will provide a case study of 200 Park Avenue in San Jose, California that illustrates an expanded definition of façade performance.
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, 200 Park Avenue is a speculatively designed 19-story building of nearly one million square feet. Coupled with its 100% electrically powered mechanical system, a high-performance envelope results in a building energy use index of 31 and a greenhouse gas reduction of 73% from the baseline. The building form is broken down by carving ‘solar canyons’ into the mass, introducing daylight deep into the floor plate. Exterior bridges are inserted within the canyons to extend the workplace outdoors and self-shade the building which allows for more transparent glass without adding significant direct solar gain.
The building envelope consists primarily of glass and opaque areas clad in embossed stainless steel spandrel panels. The window-wall ratio is tuned on each elevation based on the building’s orientation resulting in a more transparent north façade and more opaque south and west facades. Six different spandrel widths with low u-value are carefully located to balance solar control while maintaining desirable views. At the micro scale, insulation and thermal breaks are carefully coordinated around mullion extrusions to negotiate the transition from angled glass to adjacent orthogonal spandrel panels.
Beyond design thinking, an equal weight was placed on execution to ensure the highest possible envelope performance. Full-size visual and performance mockups were produced to ensure that the final enclosure design was in conformance with the both the aesthetic and technical design intent. Careful and periodic visual inspections were undertaken at both the points of manufacture and the construction sites, ultimately resulting in a new standard of office building in the region and enabling an elevated workplace experience.
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Gabriel de Bem • Eduardo Krüger • Alexandre Augusto Alberto Moreira de Abreu
Responsive shading systems can dynamically improve indoor environmental conditions based on outdoor climate variations. Among the technologies, low-cost microprocessors and sensors associated with computational algorithms control the performance of pre-programmed tasks such as the opening, closing, and rotation of elements integrated into the façade. This paper presents the design, construction, and performance evaluation of a responsive brise-soleil constructed in Curitiba, PR, Brazil (Cfb, humid subtropical). This project is part of an ongoing Ph.D. thesis. The system is based on a small-scale model developed at Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies during the winter season in California, USA. The responsive device functionality considers luminous and thermal comfort parameters: Useful Daylight Illuminance and the Adaptive Comfort Model (ANSI/ASHRAE 55). This device adapts the regular use of a commercial brise-soleil louver and motorization system into upward and downward direction slat rotation regulating direct and diffuse solar radiation incidence. The window is subject to three shading patterns: 0% shade, 50% shade, and 100% shade. The responsive rules consider outdoor air temperature, indoor air temperature, globe temperature, operative temperature, neutral operative temperature, indoor illuminance at the work plane, and the current solar angle and azimuth. Preliminary results of the full-scale model applied on the façade of a Cost-effective Bioclimatic Building Chamber (CBBC) demonstrate the system's feasibility in controlling indoor air temperature and illuminance at the work plane. The performance evaluations considered two scenarios: statically and responsively shaded. The responsive device reduced the period when the operative temperature remained under the lower thermal comfort threshold and prevented overheating, reducing the demand for heating and cooling systems. The period when the illuminance level remained within the comfort level was proportional for both scenarios. However, the responsive system reduced the amount of time when the user would be subject to discomfort caused by glare. This responsive device concept is subject to further improvements and implementation on buildings, contributing to reducing energy demand during the operational phase for lighting, cooling, or heating. The design concept and functionality criteria might be interesting for dynamic façade developers.
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