Daylighting a building describes the conscious effort to admit natural light into a building. The objectives for doing so are manifold, ranging from a desire to create healthful and stimulating spaces to efforts to reduce energy use for electric lighting and cooling. Given that the interaction of daylight and building form is a key contributor to the aesthetic experience of a space, one is unlikely to find a designer who does not desire to consider daylighting. As a consequence, daylighting holds an established position within architectural practice and education. Mies van der Rohe even proclaimed that “the history of architecture is the history of man’s struggle for light.” Despite—or maybe because of—the sometimes conflicting implications daylighting has for a building’s appearance, its energy bill, and its ability to provide comfortable work spaces, there exists no commonly recognized or followed daylighting design approach.

The primary focus of this program will be the study of lighting in an architectural context. The course will stress the balance of daylighting, glare, and solar gains throughout the design process and place an emphasis upon the role day- and sunlight can play in shaping architecture. The program is intended for architects, urban planners, and engineering consultants.

The main components of the program will be presented during the two initial days of formal instructions (lectures), discussions, exercises, and hands-on software demonstrations, during which students will acquire a set of design skills based on rules of thumb and advanced computer simulations, which will help them introduce daylight into their projects. The daylight performance metrics used in this course will go beyond those currently promoted through the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED™ system and include climate-based metrics and glare analysis of high dynamic–range images. We will also review current knowledge of occupant use of moveable shading devices and their impact on the overall daylight availability in buildings. The design skills introduced in this course equally apply to individual spaces as well as urban massing studies.

For the third day, which will take place ten days after the initial two-day session, participants will be given the opportunity to present work that they have done on a project of their own choice, preferably one from their ongoing practice, using the skills learned in class. Following each 15-minute presentation, participants will receive constructive feedback from the course instructor. The intent of the review day is to instill in participants the confidence that they can implement what they have learned in class right away into their day-to-day practice. Participants will be given the choice to present their project remotely via teleconferencing or in person.

The software suite we will use will be Autodesk Ecotect, Radiance, Daysim, and Evalglare. The first tool is a commercial tool. The other three tools are freely available. Teaching material will consist of a series of online tutorials, presentation slides, and research papers.

Participants are required to bring a wireless laptop--either PC or Mac with Virtual PC--to the program. Teleconferencing on the final day will require a computer with internet connection, a free trial version of GoToMeeting, and a telephone.

Participants will:
(1) learn and practice how to formulate their own definition of “good” daylighting.
(2) acquire the skills needed to carry out an annual daylight and glare analysis of complex spaces.
(3) practice how to influence design decisions directly based on this analysis.
(4) learn about current research trends and challenges related to daylighting metrics and occupant use of shading devices and controls.

A preview of some of the course content can be found under:
http://sorcerer.design.harvard.edu/gsdlectures/f2008/greenbuilt.mov (Greenbuild 2008 Educational Offsite Session on Implementing Daylight at the GSD).

Instructor

Christoph Reinhart is an associate professor of architectural technology and area coordinator for the recently formed Sustainable Design concentration within the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Master of Design Studies program. Before joining the GSD in June 2008, Christoph worked for over a decade as a staff scientist at the National Research Council of Canada and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Germany. His research expertise is in daylighting, passive climatization concepts, and the influence of occupant behavior on building energy use. He is the main developer of two popular daylighting/energy design tools, Daysim and Daylight 1-2-3, and he has led a number of simulation studies, field studies, and occupant-behavior surveys. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Building Performance Simulation and served as a guest editor for a special issue on daylighting buildings in Energy and Buildings. He has authored and coauthored more than 65 scientific articles and chaired the scientific committee for esim 2008. Between 2005 and 2007 he was a member of the Technical Advisory Group for LEED-Canada and an adjunct professor at the School of Architecture at McGill University. From 2002 to 2006 he was a subtask leader within the International Energy Agency’s Task 31: Daylighting Buildings in the 21st Centuryresearch project. He has been invited to present his work at numerous professional meetings and institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Lightfair. Christoph holds a Dr.-Ing. degree in architecture from the Technical University of Karlsruhe and a Diplomphysiker degree from Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany.

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