The implementation of natural lighting for human health from a planning perspective

J Mardaljevic

doi:10.1177/14771535211022145

Abstract

This paper makes the case that a significant factor in the failure to ensure adequate daylighting performance for interior spaces is often due to the inadequacy of methods used at the early stages of planning. All of the methods currently used for daylight/sunlight planning share common failings: they cannot make meaningful estimations of performance at the outset, nor can the methods used be extended/refined to overcome these failings. Thus, it is argued, a new approach is required. The paper gives an overview of the history and development of methods to predict performance; from the conception of the daylight factor to climate-based daylight modelling. The impact of prescriptive planning regulations is described using New York City as the example. The paper concludes with an outline of a new modelling schema which can provide the much needed link between the real-world practicalities of building planning and the need to determine realistic indicators of building performance at the earliest stages of obtaining planning consent.

Highlights

1.1 Daylight and human health There appears to be a general consensus that regular exposure to daylight is essential to maintain human health and well-being
The earliest connection linking insufficient daylight/sunlight to a recognised clinical pathology was made in 1861–1862.1 More recently, insufficient illumination received at the eye during childhood/adolescent development is implicated as one of the factors causing an enormous increase in the incidence of short-sightedness in teenagers: a ‘myopia boom’
The impetus for what eventually became Aperture-Based Daylight Modelling (ABDM) was the experience of eight years on EU/CEN panel that delivered EN 17037

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Daylight and human health There appears to be a general consensus that regular exposure to daylight is essential to maintain human health and well-being. With regard to daylight indoors, there is ample evidence that building occupants invariably prefer spaces with windows (providing ‘good daylighting’ and views) to spaces without windows (or with ones that are ‘too small’).[3] The reasons why would appear to be multi-factorial, e.g. ‘connection’ to the outdoors, the information provided by the view (including the sense of time), the continuous (daylight) spectrum of illumination, the inherent changeability and dynamics of daylight illumination, etc.[4] The complex and interdependent nature of these interactions are such that it has proven extremely challenging to quantify the importance of any one of the individual factors. There is little consensus regarding what the general or ß The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers 2021

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