SUN, LIGHT AND WIND IN CENTRAL WELLINGTON Michael Donn, Werner Osterhaus and Andrew Bluck Centre for

Building Performance Research School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.

Paper submitted to the 1999 ACSA/CIB Technology Conference Technology in Transition: From the 20th to the 21st Century Under the theme: Architectural design and the building industry

Montreal, Canada June 25-30, 1999

Phone: +64 4 802 6200 Fax: +64 4 802 6204 email addresses: michael.donn@vuw.ac.nz,, werner.osterhaus@vuw.ac.nz

SUN, LIGHT AND WIND IN CENTRAL WELLINGTON Topic category: Architectural design and the building industry

ABSTRACT This paper examines the application of wind tunnel testing and solar access assessment in the Central Business District of Wellington, New Zealand. A wind tunnel test report must be submitted for all new buildings over four storeys in the Central Business District before planning permission is granted. Solar access is much less thoroughly considered. Practical barriers that impede the full achievement of the potential promised by these techniques are identified. The barriers are principally ones related to economic efficiency and the speed of the approval process. Developers like to have straightforward processes. The system has to look fair and this often leads to a demand for a simple compliance procedure. Performance requirements are seen as expensive with respect to consultants= time. Whichever is the cheapest building design idea in terms of design effort and construction costs, is seen to be the most desirable. There is apparently a strong desire amongst developers to bring a formula-based approach back into urban design practice. The paper concludes with a proposal for a revision to the Wellington City Council wind tunnel test procedure. It is neither a pure performance, nor a pure prescription procedure. Rather, it is a hybrid. A detailed prescription is proposed for the determination of which buildings must be tested. Those buildings that are tested must comply with the existing performance specifications.

SUN, LIGHT AND WIND IN CENTRAL WELLINGTON

Topic category: Architectural design and the building industry

Most educators specialising in architectural technology believe that their science can contribute positively to the quality of the built environment. This paper examines the application in the Central Business District of Wellington, New Zealand, of two architectural science techniques for the assessment of the performance of a building. It identifies the practical barriers that impede the full achievement of the potential promised by these techniques.

Wellington city is the capital of New Zealand. The city itself has a population of around 125,000. The Central Business District serves a greater Wellington area of population close to 500,000. It perches on the edge of a harbour surrounded by three 500m high hills. At least partly because of the small area of flat land available for development the CBD has the air and style of a much larger city. The financial and shopping districts have buildings that are mostly 15-20 storeys tall. The traditional harbour edge of the CBD is being slowly reclaimed by the city for recreational and other uses now that its port functions are being reorganised and modernised.

High ambient wind speeds are experienced on a regular basis in Wellington. At least one CBD building had been causing wind problems at ground level for pedestrians since the 1920's. Traffic police were stationed on these windy corners in the 1920's and 30's to assist people across the street. And well into the 1960's ropes were placed at particularly windy corners to prevent people from being thrown inadvertently in front of passing traffic.

A Wind Ordinance [1] was introduced in Wellington as an apparent response to the public debate about the predicted impact on the wind of a thirty-storey building on a prominent corner in the main downtown shopping precinct. This debate was fostered by a wind tunnel test that was made public. It changed the mind-set of the local populace and hence the City Council. That early Wind Ordinance required developers merely to submit a AWind Report@ if they were constructing a building of over 4

storeys in the CBD. A revision brought into force in 1985 [2] required wind tunnel testing for all new construction and also specified performance criteria. Buildings which failed to meet these criteria

would not gain a permit for construction. For the Standard and Full Wind Tunnel Tests the Performance requirements were:

Existing Wind Speeds

Wind speeds resulting from Requirements on developer development proposal If exceeding 10m/second within a proposed open space or landscaping area for which a development bonus is sought. Reduce to 10m/second where public have access within open space/landscaping area or relinquish the development bonus. 1) Reduce to 15m/second 2) Although other directional wind speeds may be increased towards 15m/second, the overall impact is to be no worse than existing. Reduce to 15m/second Reduce to max. 18m/second.

Up to 15m/second

If exceeding 15m/second

15-18m/second Above 18m/second

If exceeding 15m/second If more than 18m/second

The Ordinance re-write in 1985 concentrated on two flaws with the previous format: a) it required developers to state in the wind report how they would alter the building in response to the wind tunnel test results; and b) it tried to encourage architects to consider wind issues early in the design process. A two-stage testing process was set up, the first stage of which was simple and exploratory to encourage consideration of aerodynamics early in the design process. The incentive to use this simple do-it-yourself test was that successful completion avoided the necessity for the detailed second stage which was more complex, more expensive, and normally had to be done once the design was complete, necessitating expensive alterations if the design was shown not to perform.

The simple wind tunnel test procedure was intended to make it easy for wind environmental design to be an integral part of the early design phase of all CBD buildings in Wellington. It was predicated on the philosophy that decisions made early in the building design process are crucial to the success

or otherwise of a building=s environmental performance [3]. ARemedial@ measures tacked onto a fundamentally flawed basic design would be far less successful than getting the design right to start with. The 1985 Wellington City Council Wind Ordinance specified three Wind Tunnel Tests: a Pre-Design Test, a Standard Test and a Full Wind Report. Where the results of the simple Pre-Design Wind Report met the Council=s performance criteria, the Council=s requirements in respect of wind design will be deemed satisfied [2]. Other cities around the world have Awind ordinances@. San Francisco, Boston, Edmonton, Calgary all have varying levels of complexity of wind ordinance. For many cities considering introduction of such an ordinance Criteria are not specified in the legislation, which results in negotiation between developer and city authorities on a case-by-case basis [3]. The situation varies from Wellington in two key areas: the definition of All high rise developments in the central area. In Wellington in 1985 the Ordinance applied to all buildings no matter what their height. The argument was that placing a large park in the middle of a set of 20 storey buildings could cause more problems of exposing the pedestrian to high winds than a ten storey building would.

Criteria for acceptable performance are often given in terms of mean wind speed, and also depend on the use of the area and the season of occurrence. In places like Calgary they have more severe winter criteria to counter the wind chill effect. At the time of introduction of the Wind Ordinance in Wellington the approach of specifying acceptable performance rather than building size and shape was an innovative notion.

Six years after the Ordinance was revised a survey [4] sought to ascertain designers= attitudes towards the wind. Wind reports on 51 buildings designed by 23 architectural firms had by this time been presented to Council as part of the planning approval process. Sixteen architects from fourteen firms involved in the design of these buildings agreed to be interviewed for the survey. There are three very strong trends in the data above:

General recognition of the need for consideration of the wind environment when

designing buildings in Wellington. I don=t think that any clients or developers or architects dispute that the Ordinance has improved the environment for Wellington. Has made it better in terms of it would have been worse if it [the Ordinance] hadn=t been there.

The general level of understanding of aerodynamics of buildings is disappointing. A number of the architects showed an understanding of the importance of tower podium curved facade, verandahs, canopies ... and increasing wind speeds with height. However, on many other occasions they spoke of wind baffles or aerofoils;

and said things like: Buildings create wind, nothing can be done about it; Tower-podium concept for wind is really bad.

The architects thought that taking part in wind tunnel tests helped them to design better - Provides increased awareness of problems and a feel for why they happen. However they do not favour being the people who do pre-design wind tunnel tests because with it, the Ordinance is too complex and because they feel they lack ... expertise in the office and because it was likely to be not economical or time efficient ...

The analysis demonstrated that architects acknowledge the importance of getting the design right early, but want to do less work to get the design right. Can=t stop progress; Architect will build model and observe testing as part of fee but not pay for testing or analysis; If costs were lower, situation could change.

In recent years the Ordinance has been simplified. It was argued successfully during a major review of the whole City Plan that a) so few architects had used the pre-design options; and b) the quality assurance specifications in the Ordinance for the self-certification of wind tunnel tests done by

architects were so complex that the provisions were counter-productive.

A further simplification in the new District Plan [5] saw the re-introduction of the 4 storey minimum building height before wind tunnel testing was required. This latter action was based largely on economic grounds. It was argued that it was unreasonable to impose the high cost of a wind tunnel test on the developer of a small building. The positive value to the city of the wind tunnel testing of a new one storey supermarket building was not enough to outweigh the negative feedback from several developers about the wind tunnel testing of their one storey low cost building.

Overall, the survey analysis shows Architectural Technology as a very positive contributor to the quality of life in Wellington City. Wind tunnel simulation of reality contributes greatly to the nature and development of this improved quality of life. In the time that the Ordinance has been in place a complete shift has occurred in the thinking of Wellingtonians. Every Wellingtonian who walks through the City on a regular basis has encountered the >Lido effect=. The Lido was the first caf to put its tables out on the street. Now many others do the same. The Lido caf benefits from the shelter provided by the aerodynamically sound new Civic Centre buildings. During the debates in 1984 about the Wind Ordinance the suggestion that good design could make sheltered outdoor caf s a possibility was laughed at. Now we this quality of life is expected by all.

On the basis of this success, it has been suggested that the City could set up performance criteria for all desirable environmental qualities and not set height or other physical limits at all. It would make the conflicts that sometimes arise in wind analysis less complex. In studies of the aerodynamics of buildings it is sometimes found that making a building taller while retaining the same volume will improve the wind at ground level. This taller building is in direct conflict with the height limits and other physical restrictions set out in the Ordinance.

It is possible to imagine a performance requirement for the sun in urban areas. In fact, following the leads of places like San Francisco and Calgary one might even create an index of outdoor comfort that accounted for the combinations of wind sun and temperature. Several CAD packages exist that

permit the designer to assess solar shading in the street while modelling their building in 3D. The requirements of buildings for daylight can be easily quantified. It should be relatively easy to establish the amount of sun that is wanted at street level in parks and boulevards and the amount of indirect light that must shine on windows for their interiors to be well lit. The potential exists for architects to be able to contribute more widely to the improvement of the health of the city.

Reviews of past and current daylight and sunlight requirements [6,7,8,9] show that rights to solar access for buildings were recognised in Roman Law as early as the first century A.D.. And daylight requirements in urban planning have existed for at least 800 years, since the British enacted the >Ancient Lights= Law in 1189.

This type of >right to light= is still the basis for the current British standard for daylighting. Current British practice sets simpler standards for daylight protection. New buildings should not reduce daylight to existing buildings by more than 20 percent. Daylight on the boundary of undeveloped

sites must be retained with a sky access of 17 percent, 2 metres above the ground.

The Americans take a different approach to daylight access.

Their approach was pioneered by

William Atkinson in 1912. He proposed that beyond a permitted vertical height (equal to the street width) buildings should step back from the street facade until the building floor area is less than 25 percent of the site. From there the building could continue up to any height.

Boston and many other cities in the USA required similar building standards until the 1960=s. that point they were abandoned in favour of Floor Area Ratios. showed no consideration for sunlight or daylight.

At

The new approach, however,

In 1984, Boston adapted of process for measuring daylight access in a street developed by Swedish architect Pleijel. This method uses a fish eye camera lens and transparent overlays to calculate

daylight access. The goal of the Boston scheme is to ensure that new buildings do not create any new shading on existing structures. It involved measuring the current daylight for the central city.

New York and San Francisco also undertook daylight zoning studies around the same time. York initially adopted a complicated system based on the Waldram diagram.

New

Daylight, along with

other environmental factors, was considered to determine a building=s impact, with different zones of daylight access being given different value ratings. A building was required to reach certain daylight ratings, and a certain total rating to receive building consent. This system proved overly

complicated and was changed to a simple building envelope requirement, which is easy to apply, but of far less sophistication in its treatment of daylight access. San Francisco developed a system related to sunlight, rather than daylight, based on Ralph Knowles= work. This system provides set sunlight

penetration into city blocks, with different blocks requiring different penetration times, depending on zoning classifications.

Te Aro is an area stretching South from the harbour, past Te Papa Tongarewa, - the Museum of New Zealand - across the major shopping and entertainment boulevard Courtenay Place and on up the slope of Mount Cook to the Wellington Polytechnic campus. It is largely filled with low-rise industrial or warehouse buildings. Increasingly, many of the old warehouses and the spaces between them are being transformed into apartment buildings. At present the Wellington City Council (WCC) has no regulations at all regarding daylight, and very few relating to sunlight. suited to the application of daylight or sunlight performance criteria. Courtenay Place is well The surrounding area has

building height restrictions of between 10.2 metres and 43.8 metres, and is defined in the Wellington District Plan [5] as the Te Aro basin end of the >Low Central City=. Overall, changes in the Te Aro Basin are contributing to improved life quality for Wellington by providing intermediate scale residential and commercial developments between the residential areas of Mount Victoria and Oriental Bay to the East and the high-rise Central Business District to the West of the Te Aro Basin. The immediate

Courtenay Place precinct is classified as a character area, and it is limited to less intense development. This area has great potential for relatively low scale development, an ideal base for

daylight and sunlight planning.

Daylighting

in

this

area

of

Wellington has been proven to be a viable option in terms of energy savings. A study in 1978 by Chan

[10] concluded that, even on the South side of a building, energy cost savings for lighting and extra cooling increased costs cost outweigh for heat the lost

through the glazing for standard single glazed windows.

Chan concluded that if British daylight standard were to be adopted, it would make many of the potential developments in the area impossible. To fit in amongst a set of existing 2-storey buildings

with a minimum height of 10.2 metres, a new structure would have to be 17.5 metres away, on sites that can be as narrow as 7.5 metres wide. A single storey building would have to be 4.1 metres

away. A building at the 43.8 metre height limit would need to be 50 metres away.

The old New York method would create semi-acceptable building envelopes, and could work well down Tory Street, which runs north-south and is fairly narrow. The problem with this method is

that it only applies to the street edge of a building. The area of Wellington under consideration is made up of a very few blocks, with some sites having dimensions of 7.5 metres by 34 metres. To

ensure any sort of daylighting levels for these sites, new streets or daylight corridors would need to be provided.

The complex Boston method is possibly the optimum method to apply in the interests of quality daylight assessment. As the Waldram diagram attempted for New York can also be computerised, it would allow quick and easy assessment of a new building. Both these methods are based on the

amount of sky blocked by the building, and would require the WCC to set limiting values for sky access. These values would balance the character and overall building volume of the area without discouraging potential development.

Assured access to sunlight can only benefit the character of Courtenay Place which is part of Wellington=s >Golden (shopping) Mile= and an area specifically defined as low density. It is also likely to contribute to the areas= economic profitability.

Assuring sunlight for Courtenay Place itself is not a difficult task.

At present, between the hours of

10 am and 4 pm, between mid-September and mid-March only the new apartments at the Eastern end of the street cast significant shadows. Courtenay Place in an ordinance. This same period could be chosen for sunlight access for

If this period were chosen, and the extent of acceptable shadow were set at the edge of the footpath on the South side of the street, then the maximum height of buildings to the North would be set by an angle of approximately 26.5 degrees measured normal to the South side of the street. This

equates to a street wall of approximately 7.8 metres in height to the North for the most narrow centre portion of the street. If the street wall was set at 10.2 metres, the longest shadows during

the defined period would fall just short of the building footings on the south side of the street. Areas of the footpath would be shaded to a degree for small periods after 3 pm in the afternoon until November 30 and from February 28.

However, even such mild suggestions as a Knowles style solar envelope over each CBD block of the city raises problems that the Council has backed away from. The most obvious problem is that buildings on the north side of an east west street must be lower than those on the south side (Wellington is in the Southern Hemisphere). The Council does not want to deal with aggrieved property owners whose property values are largely determined by the potential size of a development on their site. They would feel that it was unjust that the people on the opposite side of the road had higher value

properties as a result of a Council decision.

An

important

aspect

to

be

discussed alongside solar access is the parallel need for selective solar shading due to New Zealand=s

harsh UV radiation conditions.

Schools, for example, of necessity provide solar shading for outdoor

play and break areas to protect children from the harmful effects of the sun. For outdoor seating areas at cafs and restaurants, patrons desire shading even on days with pleasant air temperatures as the intense solar radiation raises people=s body temperatures unpleasantly. However, providing

flexible and simple shading devices which can easily be removed is often made impossible due to Wellington=s windy environment. umbrellas are clearly unsuitable. European type retractable canvas awnings or free-standing

Ensuring sunlight access for the roofs of buildings is an issue that may be relevant in the future, as active solar design technologies improve. Developments in photovoltaic cell cost and efficiency in This is

Sweden and at Massey University may mean that PV cells may become economically viable. an issue for the future which can be planned for now, but requires further investigation.

For both the wind environment and solar access assessment in Wellington the expected intractable problem with performance specification is the training required by Council officers who are to check the performance calculation. Checking a reported wind speed in a wind tunnel test against the published criteria is relatively easy. But total performance specification and compliance checking require that the Council staff be knowledgeable in all the relevant environmental performance simulation techniques. Without this knowledge they have little hope of negotiating trade-offs between different performance requirements.

The following table illustrates a possible solution to the problem increasingly found with administering the Wind requirements in the Te Aro precinct in the Wellington CBD. As noted earlier, solar access is not currently a significant part of the WCC building performance requirements.

Over the past couple of years, few wind tunnel tests have been performed for new buildings or for alterations to existing buildings in the Te Aro area. Sometimes a building under four storeys has

one storey added.

Sometimes a further four storeys are added.

In most cases, the Council does

not require a wind tunnel test because the scale of the work is similar to or smaller than that involved in constructing a building under four storeys from the ground up. To ask the developers to wind tunnel test is to place a greater relative financial burden on them than they would encounter when planning a new building. However, the system is clearly flawed when a four-storey building is

effectively doubled in height in an area where its neighbours are two to three storeys in height. Equally it is flawed if a developer has to perform a wind tunnel test when placing an extra penthouse on a ten-storey building which is otherwise aerodynamically sound.

With the high turnover in the City=s plan checking department it has not been possible for people checking the wind reports to gain sufficient experience to make informed judgments about the importance or not of a wind tunnel test. The apparent freedom of the performance approach requires one person with considerable experience and training to oversee the planning process. This cannot easily be done. It also has the potential to place considerable responsibility on that one It also has the further potential to make the Developers like to have

person not to abuse his/her position of power.

planning approval process appear extremely complex to the outsider.

straightforward planning approval processes. The system, therefore, has to look fair and this often requires that it have a simple procedure to be followed.

New Zealand has recently introduced a performance-based Building Code.

It specifies minimum It does

acceptable levels of performance in the interests of health and safety of people in buildings. not specify good practice.

It is unfortunately still viewed by the building community as the The performance option is seen as expensive

definition of good practice that the codes of old were.

with respect to consultants= time and thus the >barely legal= acceptable solutions described in the documents accompanying the Code are the norm. Whichever is the cheapest building design idea There is

in these documents, in terms of design effort and construction costs, is commonplace.

apparently a strong desire amongst developers to bring the same formula-based approach back into urban design practice.

It seems that there are improvements needed in the Wind Ordinance in Wellington: a) cheapness and simplicity on the part of the developer; and b) application of the wind tunnel test requirement only to appropriate situations. To codify or otherwise establish a reliable procedure for a wind

tunnel test, or indeed any other building performance evaluation requires a checklist like that shown in the following table. The difficulty with checklists of this type is that they risk immediately a return of the Ordinance to the prescriptive state it occupied prior to introduction of the performance requirements. the checklist. alternative. The potential design freedom of the performance approach is likely to be limited by As far as the authors can ascertain, this is a risk that must be taken. There is no

A wind tunnel test shall be performed on any building that at the completion of its construction or reconstruction or refurbishment is over four storeys in height, with the following provisos: IF the addition to a building is less than one third the height of the original building, AND IF the total building height is not greater than one and a half times the average height of the neighbouring buildings (to a distance of one block in each windward direction) IF the addition to a building is greater than one third the height of the original building, AND IF the total building height is not more than 30% taller than the average height of the neighbouring buildings (to a distance of one block in each windward direction) IF the building is adjacent to a public park or other public area where people might reasonably expect to be able to sit in comfort for long periods of time (greater than 30 minutes) IF the building height after construction will be within 20% of the median height of the buildings (including open sites in this calculation as 0.0m A wind and a solar access study must be undertaken. No wind tunnel test is needed. No wind tunnel test is needed. No wind tunnel test is needed.

high if they exist) within one block in all directions, AND IF the building is of tower-on-top-of-podium construction AND IF the building has a verandah over the full length and width of the footpath on the public frontage of the building.

References [1] Wellington City Council (WCC). Wellington, 19??. [2} Wellington City Council (WCC). Wellington, 1985. Wellington District Scheme - Ordinance 3, Section B5, WCC, Wellington District Scheme - Ordinance 3, Section B5, WCC,

[3] Lawson, T. V. Wind Effects on Buildings - Vol.1, Design Applications, Applied Science Publishers, London, 1980. [4] Davies, Kathryn J. Wind tunnel modelling of the pedestrian wind environment: modelling the built environment, MBSc Thesis, Victoria University Wellington, 1992. [5] 1998. Wellington City Council (WCC). Wellington District Plan, WCC, Wellington, 24 February

[6] Butti, Ken and John Perlin A Golden Thread - 2500 years of solar architecture and technology Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, NY, 1980. [7] Littlefair, Paul J. Site Layout Planning for Daylight, BRE Information Paper, British Research Establishment, Garston, Watford, 5/1992. [8] [9] Knowles, Ralph L. Knowles, Ralph L. Energy and Form, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1974. Sun Rhythm Form, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1981.

[10] Chan, Seong Aun. The Effect of Daylight and Sunlight Requirements on the Energy Balance of New Zealand Window Systems, March Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1978.