Recommended Practice For Daylighting Buildings

For thousands of years people have aligned their homes with the sun. This tendency decreased with the availability of artificial light. Yet, due to the health effects of artificial light as well as rising energy costs, the issue of designing with daylight is of great importance again today. The primary objective of daylight systems is to make maximum use of daylight for certain building types and climates. The book documents the various dimensions of the optimum use of daylight with particular reference to window orientation, light distribution, and prism technology, and discusses the health and economic related aspects. In the final chapter, existing design concepts are documented in detail, including the expansion of the Art Institute of Chicago Museum in the United States by Renzo Piano Building Workshop,Terminal 3 of the Changi Airport in Singapore by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and the Clever House in Germany by Behnisch Architekten.

This highly regarded BRE guide gives advice on site layout planning to achieve good sunlighting and daylighting both within buildings and in the open spaces between them. New material covers dense urban areas, trees and hedges.

For more than half a century, this book has been a fixture in architecture and construction firms the world over. Twice awarded the AIA's Citation for Excellence in International Architecture Book Publishing, Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings is recognized for its comprehensiveness, clarity of presentation, and timely coverage of new design trends and technologies. Addressing mechanical and electrical systems for buildings of all sizes, it provides design guidelines and detailed design procedures for each topic covered. Thoroughly updated to cover the latest technologies, new and emerging design trends, and relevant codes, this latest edition features more than 2,200 illustrations--200 new to this edition--and a companion Website with additional resources.

This authoritative and multi-disciplinary book provides architects, lighting specialists, and anyone else working daylight into design, with all the tools needed to incorporate this most fundamental element of architecture. It includes: an overview of current practice of daylighting in architecture and urban planning a review of recent research on daylighting and what this means to the practitioner a global vision of architectural lighting which is linked to the climates of the world and which integrates view, sunlight, diffuse skylight and electric lighting up-to-date tools for design in practice delivery of information in a variety of ways for interdisciplinary readers: graphics, mathematics, text, photographs and in-depth illustrations a clear structure: eleven chapters covering different aspects of lighting, a set of worksheets giving step-by-step examples of calculations and design procedures for use in practice, and a collection of algorithms and equations for reference by specialists and software designers. This book should trigger creative thought. It recognizes that good lighting design needs both knowledge and imagination.