Brise soleil

Short description: Sunshade for architectural sun control

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.

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] The system allows low-level sun to enter a building in the mornings, evenings and during winter but cuts out direct light during summer.^[2]

Architecture

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^[3] to the elaborate wing-like mechanism devised by Santiago Calatrava for the Milwaukee Art Museum^[4] or the mechanical, pattern-creating devices of the Institut du Monde Arabe by Jean Nouvel.^[5]

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.^[6]

Gallery

Millennium Point, Birmingham, UK
City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia: brise soleil at the L'Hemisfèric
The movable Burke brise soleil on the Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum closes at sunset.
Gustavo Capanema Palace in Rio de Janeiro
Detail of north facade of Gustavo Capanema Palace
The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Geosciences Institute of Unicamp (Campinas, Brazil)
The New York Times Building by Renzo Piano
Curutchet House by Le Corbusier, inside view