Victor Olgyay
Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism
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Princeton · 1963 · English
Summarised and illustrated here; the text is not reproduced.
A systematic method for shaping buildings to their climate: charts of human comfort, sun-path diagrams, shading masks and rules for orientation, form and overhangs.
Victor Olgyay and his twin brother Aladar studied how temperature, humidity, wind and sun combine to make people comfortable, plotting the result on a “bioclimatic chart”. From it the book derives design rules: orient the long side of a building towards the equator; shade windows during the overheated part of the year and admit the sun in the cold part; choose compact or spread-out forms according to the climate. Its sun-path diagrams and protractors for designing shading devices remain in use.
The book, part by part
Rules drawn from Design with Climate
On an equator-facing window, make the overhang deep enough to shade the whole window from the high noon sun of summer, and no deeper, so that the low winter sun passes beneath it into the room.
noon sun altitude = 90° − latitude ± 23.44° · overhang D = window height ⁄ tan(summer altitude)
Place heavy materials (concrete, stone, brick, earth) where the winter sun falls on them inside the insulated envelope, so that they absorb heat by day and give it back at night.
Lay out the rows east–west so that the long, glazed face of every house turns to the south (in the northern hemisphere), taking the low winter sun and shading easily from the high summer sun.
Set the gap between rows so that the shadow of each row at noon on the chosen winter day falls short of the glazed face of the row behind it.
gap = H ÷ tan α, with α = 90° − latitude − 23.4° at the winter solstice (at 48° N, α ≈ 18.6°: gap ≈ 3 H)
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Victor Olgyay, Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/source/olgyay. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.