Brise soleil

Brise soleil, sometimes brise-soleil (French: [bʁiz sɔlɛj]; lit. '"sun breaker"'), is an architectural feature of a building that reduces heat gain within that building by deflecting sunlight.[1] More recently, vertical Brise soleil have become popular. Both systems allow low-level sun to enter a building in the mornings, evenings and during winter but cut out direct light during summer.[2]

A basic brise soleil at the Charles Wells Brewery for Wells & Co. This photo was taken of the south facing elevation at noon in December, a little before the Winter Solstice. Note how all the windows are in the shade.

ArchitectureEdit

Brise-soleil can comprise a variety of permanent sun-shading structures, ranging from the simple patterned concrete walls popularized by Le Corbusier in the Palace of Assembly to the elaborate wing-like mechanism devised by Santiago Calatrava for the Milwaukee Art Museum or the mechanical, pattern-creating devices of the Institut du Monde Arabe by Jean Nouvel.[citation needed]

In the typical form, a horizontal projection extends from the sunside facade of a building. This is most commonly used to prevent facades with a large amount of glass from overheating during the summer. Often louvers are incorporated into the shade to prevent the high-angle summer sun falling on the facade, but also to allow the low-angle winter sun to provide some passive solar heating.[3]

GalleryEdit

  • Millennium Point, Birmingham, UK

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  • City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia: brise soleil at the L'Hemisfèric

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  • I. The movable Burke brise soleil on the Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum closes at sunset.

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  • Gustavo Capanema Palace in Rio de Janeiro

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  • Detail of north facade of Gustavo Capanema Palace

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  • The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at night

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  • Geosciences Institute of Unicamp (Campinas, Brazil)

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  • The New York Times Building by Renzo Piano

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  • Curutchet House by Le Corbusier, inside view

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 Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the 
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