Commercial daylighting systems can generate significant savings in electricity consumption, yet they are poorly received in the commercial or office building sector. Barriers inhibiting widespread adoption of these daylighting systems include occupant dissatisfaction, high cost (especially in the case of retrofits), and difficulty estimating target illuminances. In order to overcome some of the...

Overheating, glare, and high-energy demand are recurrent problems in office buildings in Santiago, Chile (33°27'S; 70°42'W) during cooling periods. Santiago climate is warm and dry, with high solar radiation and temperature during most of the year. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the thermal and daylighting performance of office buildings transparent façades composed of three differe...

Different approaches have been introduced for the daylighting system to reduce energy consumption, but they were not populated due to complex, high cost, and insufficient designs. There has been a recent problem in achieving uniform distribution of sunlight at a destination deep inside the building. Therefore, we propose a system to achieve high illumination by illuminating the surface of the a...

Autodesk Ecotect TM is an environmental analysis software which according to the U.S. Department of Energy, has not been validated yet. Therefore, the objectives of this research were to validate accuracy of Ecotect TM for thermal and daylighting simulations of buildings and provide recommendations to the Architecture, Engineering and Construction community on application of Ecotect TM . Analys...

Finding the proper trade-off between blocking direct sunlight, ensuring sufficient indoor daylighting and view out is a particularly delicate task especially in arid climates, due to harsh environmental conditions. As a tentative answer to this challenge, an adaptive shading and daylighting system (Shape Variable Mashrabiya – SVM) has been developed by the authors, described in an earlier paper...

The utilisation preference of glazed facades in the hot regions is accompanied by serious environmental and economic impacts. Attempts are continuing to fulfil an optimum balance between minimising heat gains and maximising daylighting benefits; in an economical approach. This study was conducted in Egypt, where a real case study was investigated to evaluate the thermo-visual performance of a b...

Designing spaces that are able to balance illumination, glare and solar gains over a whole year is a real challenge, yet a problem faced every day by building envelope designers. To assist them in this search, a full year, climate-based daylighting simulation method was developed, called Lightsolve, meant to be used early on in the design process when façade and space details have not yet been ...