DC Water Headquarters Case Study

Facades must be responsive to a myriad of qualities and influences ranging from urban impact and aesthetic character to numerous performance requirements—heat gain/loss, daylighting considerations, glare, accommodation of views, relationship to interior elements, and structural implications.

Due to previous limitations of available tools and computational capacity, analysis of complex curvilinear facades has been typically limited to full-building analysis that aggregates and oversimplifies results into a few cardinal faces of a building that are then generalized to inform a final design. In some cases various iterations could be tested to optimize the design in a limited way. With advances in both available tools and available computational capacity, new analysis methods are available to help design teams explore and understand the complex performance characteristics of curvilinear facades. Notably, automated computational methods provide insights early in the design process, when they can inform the fundamentals of a design. As the design is developed, additional data can illuminate the relationships between isolated design topics, such as facade design and interior programming. The current level of analysis allows for the design of curved building facades in which each portion of the facade can optimize energy, daylighting, and other metrics as needed.

A more nuanced level of analysis suggests a more nuanced architecture. The design of the DC Water Headquarters in Washington DC features a continuously curvilinear facade. The facade was developed by optimizing facade energy performance as well as optimizing views, viewsheds, constructability, and building presence – maximizing its impact on its prominent and unique site at the edge of the Anacostia River. In this project, after the scope of glass was minimized for cost and energy efficiency, facade overhangs and the strategic placement of a second layer of tinted glass were incorporated into the project. A wide variety of analytical tools using Grasshopper, Rhino, Flux, Dynamo, and Revit workflows were developed for the analysis and development of the project which is currently under construction. In addition to passive energy reduction strategies, active strategies were studied including the use of automated blinds with individual sensors allowing each segment of the curved facade to respond accordingly. The insight gained from the range of analytical tools greatly influenced the project’s expected performance and design and is an example of how a new generation of tools enable architecture to embody a site specificity, expressing adaption to the many dimensions of context.