Optimising Daylight Performance in Healthcare Buildings with a Computational Framework Under the Impact of the Climate Crisis

Daylight has a direct impact on patient comfort and building energy consumption in healthcare facilities. It is essential to design healthcare facilities using strategies that prioritise individual health and account for time constraints, in line with the European Union Sustainable Development Goals. The design process for these structures requires orientation and sunlight exposure decisions to be performance-based. The parameters defined during the design process have a direct impact on daylight performance. This condition results in a reduction of spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA) metric, which indicates the brightness level of a space throughout the year, while increasing the Annual Sunlight Exposure (ASE). This study evaluated the sDA and ASE metrics in the scope of LEED v4 and IES LM-83 standards. This study proposes a computational optimisation-based patient room design strategy for two regions in Türkiye's different climate zones. The developed parametric model is designed within a multi-objective performance evaluation framework and aims to analyse 12 design variables that affect indoor daylight performance, including room depth, room width, shading elements, and surface reflectance, using sDA and ASE daylight criteria. Within the scope of the study's objective, the design parameters of healthcare buildings exhibiting optimal visual performance for the Mediterranean (CSA) and Continental (DFB) climate zones at mid-latitudes will be regionally classified. The computational optimisation used in the study tests the sensitivity of performance outputs to climate variability by integrating future climate projections into the model in line with the climate-responsive design approach. The study optimised and compared results using the Galapagos Genetic Algorithm and the Wallacei NSGA-II algorithm. The study found that the patient room orientation and the plan depth are decisive factors in the performance of interior daylight. The study found the optimum sDA value in the Mediterranean climate with more shading elements in wider, deeper plans, while in the continental climate, wide-window solutions in shallow plan depths achieved 90% sDA. In the optimised models, ASE remained within the 9-10% threshold. The study defines threshold values for daylight-centred designs in patient rooms across different climate zones and provides a quantitative decision-support framework for performance-oriented design in future climate projections.