What a Facade Owes the Sun
Four elevations, four different sun paths, and the case against treating them the same.
A building with the same facade on all four sides is telling you that nobody analysed any of them. The south face of a London office at midsummer receives roughly four times the solar load of the north, and glazing them identically means either overheating on one side or over-engineering the plant for all of it.
At Meridian Court the fins are one extrusion throughout — same section, same finish, same fixing — but their spacing and rake change face by face. Close and steeply raked to the south, open and near-flat to the north. One component, four performances.
The reduction in peak solar gain on the south elevation came to just under forty per cent, which removed a plant floor from the scheme. The facade paid for itself in area before anyone counted the energy.