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Digital techniques improve design for Valley

The multifunctional building Valley, designed by architect Winy Maas, boasts 183 rental apartments. Every single one of them is different. Because of the staggered façades, there is a wide variety of apartment types, each with its own unique floor plan. Valley is an expression of Maas’ vision of the urban environment. The complex design process for the building relied heavily on computer models and digital simulations. Parametric design specialist Alex Christodoulou is now independent, but he spent the previous eight years working for the international multidisciplinary agency Arup on the design for Valley. ‘Working by hand, it would have been difficult to optimise the quality of the apartments. Parametric design makes it possible to do that, using algorithms. That’s what we did with Valley.’

Aerial view of Valley, October 2021

Maximising natural daylight

Arup was commissioned by property developer Edge Technologies to develop a tool to assess the quality of all the rooms in every apartment in terms of natural daylight penetration, hours of direct sun, structure, terrace, views and privacy. ‘Even in such an unusual building, advanced software also makes it possible to explore how you can adapt the design to maximise sun and natural daylight. Even if all of the apartments and rooms in them are different’, says Christodoulou. Designing the analysis model was a challenge in itself, but it proved successful. ‘The first things we checked with the tools were the floor areas of the flats and the terraces. That was easy. But checking if there is sufficient daylight everywhere and that enough sun can penetrate is more difficult. We used modelling to do that. We model the sun penetration and measure how many hours of day there is sun or shade in a room – both in the summer and in winter. We don’t check every single day of the year, but choose a day for the season. 28 February, for example. On that date, there must be at least two hours of sun penetration. That’s determined in a national code. The same applies to daylight: there must be a certain amount of daylight in each room, related to the size of the windows. We checked this for every flat and every room. If there was insufficient light, we highlighted where the windows needed to be larger. It was then up to the architect to adapt the design on this specific point. The designs went backwards and forwards several times like this. In a rectangular building you just check once, then adaptations are made and you’ve already got the definitive design. But in this case, it took four or five rounds. In each one, we were able to refine and improve the design where necessary. We used a similar method to optimise privacy in the apartments. We were able to see whether there were certain angles where neighbours could see inside each other’s apartments. We also optimised access to green areas using the same method.’

Advantages of complex shape

Afterwards, Christodoulou and his team compared the erratic Valley design with standard buildings. ‘We were eager to identify the advantages of this complex shape. One of the advantages is the number of hours of sun. In a rectangular building, the northern side has the least hours of sun. However, this building has no northern side – the façades point in different directions. That means you have more sun and light penetration overall than in a normal building. The shape also has advantages when it comes to wind: it’s broken by the design. And, of course, you have more views – in every direction.’

The Grotto, public space in Valley

Angles

Arup also made other calculations, this time looking at the angles in the building. ‘That was also really interesting. In the first design, they varied a lot. For construction, that would also have meant many different types of formwork were required. We succeeded in making all of the angles differ by no more than five degrees. That enabled us to drastically reduce costs. That was the greatest benefit we managed to achieve using these tools.’

Exciting

In the end, ‘everyone was happy’, says Christodoulou. ‘Edge Technologies received confirmation that the design was well constructed. For me, this was also an exciting project. Parametric design requires you to have both engineering and programming skills. That was an amazing challenge. Valley has been the largest and most important project I’ve worked on in which parametric design has been used. This design technique is still quite unusual, but will become more common in the future. For me, it was a wonderful experience.’

Text: Hilde Postma

The garden from one of the apartments in Valley

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