equinox gallery
a gallery informed by solar site conditions to create a smooth transition of light and program
ARCH140
Gail Brager, Stet Sanborn
Group Project: Roger Andrade, Josh Lee, Liam McSpadden
UC Berkeley || Spring '20
A group project that uses climate-responsive design strategies to develop an exhibit space in Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, that is as performative as it is delightful. The project carefully balanced daylighting with solar gain control, minimizing energy use, and inform the building's form and aesthetic qualities.
This project seeks to use light and shade as diagrammatic strategies to define and organize geometric relationships inside and outside the building. It use the angle and projection of the sun during the equinox to create southern shading and guide the placement of glazing. This use of natural lighting and circulation will create a fluid, gradated relationship between the needs of the program and their imprints on the space.
the solar angle
Starting with the angle on the fall/spring equinox on site, we tilted the main gallery glass wall to follow this line in order to take advantage of the form to create a reinvented eggcrate shading device. After a series of daylighting analyses, we realized the need to flip the southern glazing angle to combat harsh summer sun.
As our percent shading analysis shows, this design solution performs wonderfully in the summer and lets in the low winter sun. As a result, our EUI and peak load analyses shows that our building performs extremely well at passively heating and cooling the building through shading and solar heat gain control.
the gradient of light
This placement of glazing in winding circulation negotiates the needs of the program and their imprints on the space, allowing visitors to flow through this space seamlessly through a smooth gradient of lighting conditions, before exiting onto the southern courtyard. The daylighting within the building is a response to the shading needs of different programs (from light sensitive artworks housed in the darkest part of the building to statues exhibited in the brightest).
A series of thin, vertical slivers along the northern wall allows light to gently wash across some gallery walls and illuminate the paintings on them, without disturbing the more light-sensitive works. A western clerestory window is aligned in order to allow in the setting western sun. In combination with the half-height gallery walls, light flows through the building and washes the entire ceiling with light during golden hour.
