Research Design Connection: Daylighting in the City

Saratsis and his colleagues have developed an important resource for individuals concerned about human access to daylight in urban environments.

The Saratsis team reports that “Increasing urban density leads to a conflict between space-use efficiency and daylight access…it is now possible to quantify the performance of detailed design proposals before construction…A simulation-based daylighting analysis procedure reveals the capabilities for both formulating more nuanced prescriptive zoning rules as well as for use by design teams. The procedure is used to evaluate the daylighting performance of 50 block typologies…The analysis demonstrates that certain urban massing approaches (e.g., pencil towers on a contextual base) outperform conventional massing strategies. A…case study application of an actual city block shows that innovative urban massings can improve access to daylight for the massing itself as well as for neighbouring buildings…The fact that a simulation-based approach may yield significantly larger buildable areas than current regulations suggests that design teams will be open to employ these innovative simulation approaches which anyhow only require limited extra effort to use.”

Seratsis, Dogan and Reinhart describe and demonstrate their daylighting assessment tool (which is consistent with LEED v4 spatial daylight autonomy requirements) in detail in their article, and also outline, step-by-step, the algorithm used for their analyses. Anyone who wants to apply their technique should obtain a copy of the team’s article so that they are familiar with all of its parameters.

Emmanouil Saratsis, Timur Dogan, and Christoph Reinhart. 2017. “Simulation-Based Daylighting Analysis Procedure for Developing Urban Zoning Rules.” Building Research and Information, vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 478-491.

Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.