Daylighting Collaborative and Intelligent Building Design

Echelon’s Steve Ngyuen, the fellow I interviewed for my book’s chapter on intelligent building management, spent a few minutes describing “light harvesting” to me — the idea of making use of the sun’s light the way buildings are designed, thus using electric lights mostly at night.  But not until now did I start to understand how much can be done with this.

Any use of daylighting, the practice of using natural light to illuminate building spaces, will reduce the need for electric lighting by bringing in indirect natural light into the building. But it does so much more: creating beautiful, appropriately lit spaces, and connecting people to the outdoors. I urge you to checkout the Daylighting Collaborative, and learn more about how advanced this combination of art and science — of architecture and engineering – can get. I think you’ll be impressed with how much there is to learn: concepts of lighting power density (W/ft2), illuminance levels, contrast ratios, window to wall ratios, ceiling to skylight area percentages, and reduction in glare.