Influence of geometrical and optical building parameters on the circadian daylighting of an office

Abstract

An average working individual in today's society spends a considerable amount of a typical day in an office environment. This, in turn, can negatively influence her or his circadian system if the indoor built environment is not designed to provide adequate luminous conditions. Therefore, the presented paper's main objective was to address the extent to which indoor built environment parameters influence the characteristics of the indoor non-visual and visual luminous environment. To answer the stated question, a statistical analysis of parametric simulations using multispectral software ALFA was carried out for a sample cellular office in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The influence of room, geometrical (depth, width, and window to wall ratio), and optical (reflectance of walls, ceiling, and floor and glazing transmissivity) parameters was studied for four cardinal occupant view directions. The results show that the window is the most influential building element as the window to wall ratio and glazing transmissivity are the most influential geometrical and optical parameters. However, it was exposed that this is not entirely true for occupant positions deeper in space and facing away from the window, as the influence of all studied building parameters changes according to the view orientation and position in relation to the window.