Dense and Proximate Development—Daylight in the Downtown Area of a Compact City

Abstract

Daylight is of utmost importance and should be the main source of light in most areas dedicated to working and living. When considering our contemporary way of living, it can be easily discerned that most of our life is spent indoors, yet in a typical architectonic design approach, daylight is too often hardly of consequence. Hence daylight becomes a critical factor. Designers comply with the legal requirements of the solar hours required for areas subjected to constant use. Simultaneously for electrical engineers’ daylight is only an additional source of light valued only where energy efficiency is concerned. The basic idea of this research is to, starting from the concept level, design the building’s volume in line with energy efficiency requirements and user expectations using daylight access strategy as the main parameter. This scope of research has been a subject of various scientific theses conducted within the last years at the Faculty of Architecture Warsaw University of Technology. This paper is dedicated to the latest and most developed outcomes. The presented solution is an architectonic point of view dedicated to the use of the daylight factor in office areas located in a dense city district that may support efficient energy requirements, including the requirements of the electric lighting system. Illumination values were set according to the BREEAM daylight and PN-EN 17037 Daylight of Buildings standard. The presented strategy is unconventional for Poland, but has the potential to be included in practice and should be developed further, together with electrical engineers, as a part of energy-saving solutions. Possibly, it should be followed simultaneously with the development of the compact cities ideas. It is hoped that it might be a starting point for discussion, and for a more detailed interdisciplinary research in the future.

Sunlight-Daylight Signature: a Novel Concept to Assess Sunlight and Daylight Availability at Urban Scale

“…Thus, it has become more and more important to analyze the amount of solar radiation and daylight that can reach the external envelope surfaces of buildings, both on the roof and on the vertical façades, as a function of the climate of the considered city and the specific urban settings, in terms of density, urban canyons and/or mutual shading among different buildings, as well as the materials used to finish the building envelope [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. For instance, Fernandéz et al [20] studied for the city of Sevilla (Spain) the influence on daylighting inside buildings of several parameters, such as height, width of the street, orientation, vegetation, pavement, and materiality of the façades, with the goal of 2383-8701/© 2023 The Author(s).…”

Fade Lighting Control Method for Visual Comfort and Energy Saving

“…However, light levels could change rapidly depending on weather conditions; for instance, when the sun is covered by clouds [8][9]. In environments with a high concentration of large buildings, rapid changes in illuminance could also occur when the sun appears or disappears [10][11][12]. Therefore, to maintain the indoor reference illuminance according to the purpose of the lighting, rapid illuminance changes are inevitable.…”