Influence of light redirecting control element on daylight performance: A case of Egyptian heritage palace skylight

Abstract

Adaptive reuse is generally viewed as a more sustainable solution than demolishing and reconstructing. However, when it comes to heritage buildings adaptive reuse, not only that the significance grows, but the constraints and precautions increase as well. This work studies the proposed case of Omar Tosson heritage palace reuse as a museum. The main goal is to optimally redesign the destroyed skylight using genetic algorithms to enhance the daylight performance inside the affected spaces, since daylight enhancement in building spaces influence both the occupant's mood and light distribution levels. However, the configuration of space openings does not usually meet target daylight criteria. Thus, the addition of daylight redirecting systems is usually used to improve the daylight quality. The effect of daylight control and redirecting elements is widely discussed. In this paper, the main focus is optimizing the daylight redirecting system attached to the skylight to enhance daylight quality and distribution, mainly, penetration depth. The thresholds are set 50% and 10% for Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA) and Annual Sun Exposure (ASE), respectively, translating into enough daylighting availability and acceptable uniformity of daylight distribution. The light redirecting element is located beneath the skylight vertical coverage, three of its configuration parameters are studied, namely, rotation, spacing, and material reflectivity. The results reveal that adding the light redirecting system enhances the daylight in the halls closer to the first floor but its effect diminished in the ground floor. This research presents a novel approach in adapting interior daylight conditions of the skylights in heritage spaces with minimum design interventions using multi-objective genetic algorithms.