Perrette

Building simulation

One geometry, eight questions.

Perrette takes the geometry out of an authored building model and puts it to work across eight fields of analysis — fire, ventilation, structure, acoustics, embodied carbon, energy, optimization and egress. The software is not released. Until it is, this site publishes the methods underneath it and the reference material it is built on.

The tools Building science
ZONE 01ZONE 02 ZONE 03ZONE 04 INOUT air changes / room air changes / room EXIT AEXIT B absorbing surface what carries next door
Thermal zones — the plan grouped by what shares a temperature. Schematic

One building

A building has no single performance.

A building has as many performances as there are questions asked of it, and the questions do not agree. Each one has its own physics, its own idea of what a room is, and its own way of being wrong — a wall that decides an acoustic result is invisible to a daylight model. What the eight share is the building. Everything else, from the resolution to the acceptable simplifications, belongs to the question being asked.

Fire & smoke
Where does the smoke go, and how long before the escape route stops being usable?
Ventilation
Does outside air actually reach this room, or does it pass the building by?
Structure
What carries what, and where does the load really land?
Acoustics
Can you understand what is said in this room, and what arrives from the one next door?
Embodied carbon
What has this building already cost before anyone switches it on?
Energy
How much does it use over a year, and which single decision changes that the most?
Optimization
Of the thousands of variants nobody has time to run, which few are worth running?
Crowd & egress
How long does it take to empty — at this construction phase, with these doors open?

On this site

Four places to read.

Tools

What each tool is for, the problem it solves, and what we require of it — what we refuse to deliver, and what we guarantee.

Articles

One a month, in a scientific register. What was found and what it is worth, never a recipe for reproducing it.

Building science

Reference documents on how a building actually works, written from the plant room up: the physical thing first, the job it does second, the model last.

Perrette

Where the name comes from — Auguste Perret, and the rebuilding of Le Havre — and what we took from it.