private bank offices.
a regional bank branch on the dry pacific coast, redesigned so the façade shielded the spaces from radiation, rain, and heat.
radiation on the façade.
incident solar flux on the west and south façades vs. unshaded baseline. competition entry.
brief, approach, outcome.
chitré is hot, dry, and bright, closer to a sahel climate than a wet panamanian one. the client's brief was a calm, daylit branch open to walk-in clients, which the earlier scheme had answered with a fully glazed perimeter.
the work was to cut the cooling demand back to something a quieter system could hold, without losing the daylight or the openness that made the brief make sense.
we modelled the radiation map on the existing scheme first, in three timeslots across the year. west and south were the surfaces with the highest solar load. the design was redrawn around a perforated breezeblock screen that admitted ventilated daylight while breaking the direct flux by a measurable factor of two.
the screen is local, cast on site, and reads as carved stone from outside, but the reason it exists is in the simulation, not the mood board.
the decisions that shaped it.
the façade does most of the cooling, quietly.