DMU academic’s daylight guidelines included in revision of British Standard

‘Daylight in Buildings is a code of practice for daylighting design published by BSI British Standards, the national standards body of the UK.

Mardaljevic, of DMU’s Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD), began researching into climate-based daylight modelling after concluding that traditional methods of predicting daylight in buildings was a poor representation of actuakl conditions.

Mardaljevic’s said of his approach: “Daylight modelling is very complex and there are lots of factors to be considered. For example, by increasing the amount of natural daylight in a building you can reduce the amount of electricity used on lighting. However, too much daylight can overheat buildings and create a need for air conditioning which uses more electricity. Also if there is too much daylight coming in, people draw blinds to shield them from the sun and then have to switch electric lights on – again using more electricity.

“This new technique allows for all these permutations and helps to find the right balance.”

Dr Mardaljevic has applied climate-based daylight modelling to a number of high-profile international projects including The New York Times Headquarters Building and the Hermitage Museum, in Russia.