With the development of urbanization, more and more commercial buildings are built in cities, which is resulting in a large amount of building energy consumption that threatens the ecological environment of the earth. Lighting energy in commercial buildings occupies a large proportion of consumption, and improving the quality of natural daylight in commercial atriums is of great significance for building energy efficiency as well as improving indoor comfort. This paper proposes a method for optimizing the daylight quality of commercial atriums. Starting from the perspective of parametric design, this paper investigates the current status and theoretical research on the natural daylight of commercial atriums in cold regions, taking Jinan, China, as an example. Dynamic daylight and glare simulations were performed using Rhino + Grasshopper and Ladybug + Honeybee for every design parameter in the system, followed by correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis using SPSS to determine the degree of influence of each design parameter on the daylight quality of the atrium. Based on the results of the above analysis, the multi-objective optimization plug-in Octopus is used to find the combination of design parameters that can achieve the best indoor daylight. The results show that among a total of fourteen atrium design parameters, seven of them are significantly correlated with atrium daylight, and after regression analysis, it is found that the atrium design parameters affect the atrium daylight and glare in the following order: Skylight VT, Skylight ratio, Atrium inclination, Fabric coverage, Fabric VT, Wall reflectivity, Roof reflectivity. The optimal design parameters for commercial atrium daylight quality are obtained according to the Pareto front solution set, which provides some reference and ideas for improving the optimization of commercial atrium daylight in cold regions of China.

Atriums play an irreplaceable role within the plan of modern commercial buildings. However, the presence of skylights makes the atrium suffer from unfavorable conditions such as overheating, high energy consumption, and glare, which can be partially reduced by the sun-shading design of skylights. In this paper, we conducted a field test and questionnaire survey on the daylight quality of commercial buildings in cold zones in China to find out the current problems of daylight quality in atriums and to establish a model of commercial atrium. After the dynamic daylight and energy consumption simulation, the sensitivity analysis of daylight and energy performance is performed for the skylight and shading (SAS) design parameters under three shading types. Finally, the Pareto front solution set of optimized commercial atrium daylight, visual comfort, and energy performance for the three shading types has been obtained using a multi-objective search tool. The results show that SRR has the greatest effect on sDA, DGP, and EUI in all shading cases; while SGT has a greater effect on EUI than on daylight quality; FC has a greater effect on EUI than FV on EUI; and LS and LI have a more significant influence on daylight and visual comfort. The optimal SAS values of no shading, fabric shading and louvered shading were screened as SRR is 0.4–0.5, SGT is Double silver Low-E insulating glass; SRR is 0.5–0.6, SGT is Double silver Low-E insulating glass, FV is 0.5–0.7, FC is 0.5–0.6; SRR is 0.6–0.7, SGT is Double silver Low-E insulating glass, LS is 100 mm/125 mm, and LI is 60–70°. It is expected that this study will provide some information and reference for the design of commercial atriums in cold zones in the future.