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Lighting Cultural Heritage is a complex task: light is necessary for the act of seeing, it can even enhance the visual experience [ 1 , 2 ], in addition proper lighting can significantly cut down energy consumptions [3] , but on the same time it has detrimental effects on exhibits, especially daylight. In order to safeguard the exhibits from damages, national and international standards provide specific recommendations for exhibits’ exposure, based on their photosensitivity category. These recommendations are the annual luminous exposure(LO) and the Maximum Illuminance Level (E max ), museums’ curators have to verify that the display lighting conditions comply with the standards. Historical buildings are often converted into museums but, as their original purpose was different, the lighting conditions are often inadequate (e.g. too much uncontrolled daylight), therefore the lighting conditions’ adequacy of the space should be assessed [4] . As the name suggest the annual luminous exposure requires an annual monitoring campaign, unfortunately it often happens that exhibits have been exposed incorrectly for prolonged periods, and therefore it is very important to evaluate the need of a fast intervention. In this casuistry a prolonged measurement campaign is not acceptable. Simulations can help running a great number of analysis while reducing the length and expenses of a measurements campaign, however their previsions must be validated. This paper provides the data acquired through measurements and simulations inside the Cetacean Gallery of the Monumental Charterhouse of Calci, near Pisa (Tuscany Region, Italy). The data comprehends horizontal and vertical illuminance measurements, recorded on December the 6th, and simulations run in Grasshopper with the plugins Honeybee+ and Ladybug . The data are related to the research article entitled “Application of climate-based daylight simulation to assess lighting conditions of space and artworks in historical buildings: the case study of Cetacean Gallery of the Monumental Charterhouse of Calci”, published on the Journal of Cultural Heritage [5] .

Alternative environments to real-life have been in recent demand in regard to lighting design and in museums. In this study, the effectiveness of the perception of the museum space in simulations or virtual-based environments is studied. Answers to a questionnaire regarding lighting in four different visual experiences are compared: Real-life, virtual-video-based, virtual-photo-based and virtual-render-based. A total of 117 participants were divided into four visual experience groups. Each group answered the same lighting related questions for four exhibition halls in the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa (Italy), which is housed in the Monumental Charterhouse of Calci. The answers were analyzed using ANOVA and a T-test. The results show that virtual experiences can be acceptable alternatives to real-life experience as the answers were indifferent in more than half of the criteria, and no criterion was affected significantly by experience, regardless of the hall’s characteristics. However, it was found that the hall’s characteristics also had an impact on the perception of the criteria in different experiences. Controlled artificial lighting or uniformly distributed lighting (full day or artificial light) were found to be more indifferent to the experience.

1This trial study was conducted to determine classifications for planimetric design efficiency of sample public hospitals in Turkey by developing a fuzzy logic algorithm. Utilizing primary areas and circulation areas from nursing unit floor plans, the study employed triangular membership functions for the fuzzy subsets; Mamdani rule system; min operation for finding rule firing strength; max composition; and 'centroid' method for defuzzification. The input variables -primary areas per bed and circulation areas per bed-were fuzzified in this model. The relations between input variables and output variable of design efficiency were displayed as a result of fuzzy rules. To test existing nursing unit floors, efficiency output values were obtained and efficiency classes were constructed by this model in accordance with general norms, guidelines and previous studies. The classification of efficiency was resulted satisfactorily in terms of comparing hospitals. Of the fifteen hospital floor plans tested in the model, six were in a class of low efficiency, other nine were in a class of medium one. None of them were in overall agreement with the spatial requirements in regard to standards and current recommendations. The utility of this model is in the capability to indicate boundaries of efficiency classes. Hospital designers and managers may obtain feedback information from evaluations and comparisons of existing buildings. Consequently, they may benefit from this model in decision making processes.