Natural light optimization in an existing primary school: human centred design and daylight retrofitting solutions for students wellbeing

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How the human centred design solutions will implement the benefit of daylighting in an existing primary school? This paper shows research experiences on students visual comfort inside the school building Don Milani, in Prato (Italy). The layout of training spaces, distribution and functional organization is also re-designed as flexible/resilient space/place, with a focus on the control of natural light effects for the luminous environment quality, vision and perception, but also an energy consumption reduction. The project is based on a human centred design approach, fostering the integration between sustainable lighting, human perception and biological clock (i.e. circadian rhythm) connected to the Sun daily path. Results showed the importance of natural light optimization to assure different children activities and behaviour, reorganization of the indoor environment and work/observation stations, combining the light colour variability of different materials. Findings highlighted that natural light quality assessment is fundamental to achieve not only a good lighting quality and energy consumption reduction, but also high level of visual comfort in learning spaces, implementing both the students wellbeing and their proactive behaviour, as it should be in a sustainable school building.