PARAMETRIC SIMULATION & OPTIMIZATION OF DAYLIGHTING PERFORMANCE: A CASE STUDY OF FOREIGN WORKER DORMITORIES DESIGN

Abstract

In Singapore, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought the nation’s attention to the foreign worker community when the number of infection cases spiked in April 2020. At the start of April 2020, the foreign worker dormitory infection cases started to increase and eventually surpassed the number of imported and community cases as the month progressed. While the Singapore government had placed tremendous efforts in containing the rise of the imported and the locally transmitted community cases, the deteriorating situation happening in the foreign worker dormitories were being overlooked. Some other potential reasons that may have contributed to the rapid spread of infectious disease within the foreign worker dormitories include overcrowding, poor hygiene, and lack of personal space for each worker. Therefore, after the number of infection cases within the foreign worker community became more stabilized in June 2020, the government had decided to construct new Purpose-Built Dormitory (PBD) as a form of long-term arrangement to improve the workers’ living condition.

A review on the improved standard for dormitory design highlights a large emphasis on improving the spatial arrangement of the dormitory. However, there seems to be a lack of focus on the daylighting aspect of the design. Proper daylighting design in buildings not only creates a comfortable well-lit environment but also provides energy savings in building systems and desirable space for building occupants. Therefore, there is a need to determine the daylighting performance of the dormitory design to ensure that future PBDs are well-designed for proper daylighting.

In this study, the parametric daylight optimization approach is adopted to determine the daylighting performance of an actual Quick-Built Dormitory (QBD) in Singapore. The optimization results of the baseline and proposed model were compared, and it was found that the current dormitory design has provided a sufficient amount of daylight for its building occupants. Nonetheless, the case study which demonstrated the process of parametric daylight simulation and optimization could serve as a guideline for future dormitory designers.