Energy consumption of atria; the case of a commercial-office center in the semi-arid climate of Tehran

According to the energy crisis in the world, optimization of energy consumption is indispensable. Technological advances in constructions and application of renewable energy resources demand saving energy. Atrium, as one of the construction elements, catches sufficient daylight and acts as a passive solar element and results in a decline of energy consumption. This research seeks to evaluate the impact of different positions of atrium on its energy performance; this embraces modelling three groups of spatial configuration of atriums in a given four-story building. The total volume and area of atriums in all three groups are equal. DesignBuilder, the energy simulation software, is the platform for simulation and comparison. The results show that the number of atriums does not have a noticeable impact on energy consumption; however, the spatial configuration of atriums, specially the distance of atriums to external walls have a little impact on the annual energy consumption. Based on the purpose of a specific design, one can decide on whether to take into account the discrepancy.